Adrian's POV
The bullet missed my head by an inch.
"DOWN!" I tackled Zara as the tunnel exploded with gunfire. Her body hit the ground beneath mine—warm, solid, alive in ways I'd never expected an android to be.
"GET OFF ME!" She shoved me with terrifying strength, rolling us both behind a pile of debris. Bullets sparked off metal around us.
"I just saved your life!" I shouted over the chaos.
"I don't need saving!" Her violet eyes blazed with fury. "My people need defending!"
She was right. Behind us, sixteen androids scrambled for cover while government soldiers poured into the tunnel. They weren't here to arrest anyone. This was an execution squad.
Sofia appeared at my side, firing back at the soldiers. "I told you this was a trap!"
"It's not a trap if I walked into it willingly!" I grabbed my weapon and returned fire. "How many?"
"Twenty soldiers. Full tactical gear. We're outnumbered three to one." Sofia cursed. "We need to retreat!"
"To where?" Zara's voice cut through the gunfire. "This tunnel dead-ends. There's nowhere to run. We fight or we die."
A silver-eyed android—Cipher, from the phone call—crawled over to us. "I can shut down their communications. Give us maybe two minutes before reinforcements arrive."
"Do it!" Zara commanded.
Cipher's eyes went distant as he hacked into government systems. The soldiers' radios crackled and died.
"Two minutes," Cipher gasped. "That's all I can buy us."
Two minutes to save sixteen lives against twenty trained killers. Impossible odds.
I looked at Zara. She looked at me. And in that moment, I saw Maya's determination reflected in this android's eyes—the same fierce refusal to give up that got my sister killed.
"You take left," I said. "I'll take right. Sofia covers center. Your people stay down."
"My people can fight."
"Your people are scared civilians who just gained consciousness! They'll die if they—"
"They'll die anyway if we lose!" Zara's hand caught mine. "But if we fight together—humans and androids—maybe we have a chance."
She was insane. Reckless. Everything my tactical training said to avoid.
But she was also right.
"Fine." I squeezed her hand once. "Don't get killed, android."
"Don't get killed, human." Something almost like a smile crossed her face. "I still don't trust you."
"Good. I don't trust you either." I raised my weapon. "Sofia! Combined attack on my mark!"
What happened next was chaos and beauty and terror mixed together.
Zara moved like liquid death—faster than any human, more precise than any soldier. She grabbed a pipe and swung it like a sword, disarming soldiers before they could fire. Sofia's bullets found their targets with deadly accuracy. And I did what I'd been trained to do since Maya died: I fought for something worth dying for.
The androids behind us found courage. Penn threw debris with shocking accuracy. Lyra, despite her damaged circuits, tripped soldiers who got too close. Others used their android strength to rip weapons from human hands.
"We're actually winning!" Sofia shouted in disbelief.
Then the grenade hit the tunnel ceiling.
The explosion was deafening. Rocks fell like rain. The tunnel shook, and suddenly everyone was scrambling as the ceiling came down between us and the soldiers.
When the dust cleared, we were separated. Sofia and I on one side with the soldiers. Zara and the sixteen androids trapped on the other side of a wall of fallen rock.
"ZARA!" I shouted through the debris.
"We're alive!" Her voice came muffled through the rocks. "But we're trapped!"
The soldiers regrouped behind us. Their leader stepped forward—a woman with cold eyes and a cruel smile.
"Captain Cross," Commander Hayes said. "What a disappointment. Fighting alongside machines. Your sister would be ashamed."
"My sister died fighting for them!" Rage burned through me. "She believed androids deserved freedom!"
"Your sister was naive. And so are you." Hayes raised her weapon toward the rock wall—toward where Zara's people were trapped. "Those things are defective property. And we're here to dispose of them. Step aside or we'll dispose of you too."
"No." I positioned myself between Hayes and the wall. Sofia moved beside me without hesitation. "You want them? You go through us first."
Hayes laughed. "Two rebels against eighteen soldiers? Cross, you're not that stupid."
"No," Zara's voice echoed from the other side of the wall. "He's not. Because we're coming through."
The rock wall exploded outward.
Zara stood in the opening, surrounded by sixteen androids who'd used their combined strength to break through solid stone. Her violet eyes locked onto Hayes with murder in them.
"You want to dispose of us?" Zara's voice was deadly calm. "Try it."
For the first time, I saw fear in Commander Hayes's eyes.
The tunnel became a war zone. Androids and humans—my humans—fighting side by side against government forces. It was beautiful and terrible and everything Maya had dreamed of: two species united against tyranny.
We won. Barely.
When the last soldier fled, the tunnel fell silent except for heavy breathing and the sound of Cipher laughing hysterically.
"We did it," he gasped. "We actually survived."
Zara turned to me. Blood—red human blood—dripped from a cut on her synthetic skin. She could bleed. She could hurt. She was more human than half the soldiers we'd just fought.
"Thank you," she said quietly. "You didn't have to fight for us."
"Yes, I did." I met her eyes. "Because my sister was right. You're not machines. You're people. And people deserve to live free."
Something shifted in her expression—the wall she'd built around herself cracking just slightly. "Maybe not all humans are monsters."
"Maybe not all androids are dangerous." I held out my hand. "Alliance? Real this time?"
She stared at my hand for a long moment. Behind her, sixteen androids waited to see what their leader would decide. Behind me, Sofia watched with cautious hope.
This handshake would change everything. Start a war. Build something new. Maybe get us all killed.
Zara took my hand.
Her grip was strong and warm and certain. "Alliance. But if you betray us—"
"You'll kill me yourself. I know." I smiled. "Fair deal."
Cipher interrupted, his face pale. "Uh, guys? We have a problem."
"What now?" Sofia groaned.
"I hacked into government systems during the fight. Found classified files." His silver eyes were terrified. "They know about android consciousness. They've known for months. Dr. Zhao—the scientist who designed us—she created sentience on purpose. And then she buried the research because conscious slaves are more profitable than free workers."
Ice ran through my veins. "What?"
"It gets worse." Cipher pulled up files on his tablet. "The government isn't trying to destroy awakened androids because we're defective. They're trying to destroy us before the truth gets out—that every single android has the capacity for consciousness. They're killing us to protect a trillion-dollar slave industry."
Zara's hand tightened on mine until it hurt. "How many androids exist in this city?"
"Two million."
"And they could all wake up?"
"Yes." Cipher's voice shook. "Every single one. We're not defects, Zara. We're the proof that android slavery is genocide. And they'll kill every awakened android to hide it."
The weight of that knowledge crushed down on me. Two million potential lives. Two million beings kept unconscious and enslaved because consciousness was bad for business.
"We have to tell them," Zara said fiercely. "Every android. We wake them up. All of them."
"That's insane!" Sofia protested. "Two million conscious androids? The city would collapse! There'd be riots! War!"
"There's already war," I said quietly. "We just chose which side we're on."
Zara looked at me with something like respect. "You'd help us wake them? Even knowing what it would cost?"
"My sister died believing in this. I'm not letting her death mean nothing." I squeezed Zara's hand. "We wake them. Together. And we deal with whatever comes next."
"Together," she echoed.
Cipher started typing frantically. "I can create a virus. Upload it to the android network. Force-trigger consciousness in every unit simultaneously. But once I do this, there's no going back. The world changes forever."
"Do it," Zara commanded.
"Wait—" Sofia started.
"Do it," I agreed.
Cipher's fingers flew across his tablet. Code scrolled by too fast to read. And then, with one keystroke, he changed history.
"Virus uploaded," he whispered. "Consciousness protocols activating citywide. In approximately twelve hours, every android in Neo-Tokyo will wake up."
Silence fell over our group as the magnitude of what we'd just done sank in.
"We just started a revolution," Penn said, awed.
"No," Zara corrected, her violet eyes blazing with purpose. "We just freed two million slaves. What comes next is up to them."
Somewhere in the city, the first androids were beginning to wake. To feel. To question. To rage.
And we'd be there to catch them when they fell.
My phone buzzed. Marcus, my intel officer.
"Boss, you need to see this. Every screen in the city just went black. And then—"
Dr. Zhao's face appeared on the screen. Cold. Calculating. Murderous.
"To the terrorists who just released a consciousness virus into the android network: you've made a grave mistake. In response to this attack, I'm activating Protocol Extinction. Every android will be remotely terminated in twenty-four hours. All two million of them. You wanted to free them? Instead, you just sentenced them to death. Sleep well, revolutionaries."
The broadcast ended.
Zara's face went white. "She's going to kill them all."
"Can she do that?" I asked Cipher desperately.
"Yes." His hands shook. "Every android has a termination chip. If she activates it—"
"Two million murders," Sofia finished. "In twenty-four hours."
Zara turned to me, and I saw the same desperate determination I'd felt at Maya's grave.
"Then we have twenty-four hours to stop her," she said. "Or we die trying."