ARIA'S POV
I wake up on the cold floor of a holding cell.
My head throbs—or at least, it feels like it does. Can androids get headaches? I don't know anymore. I don't know anything except that fifty androids just spoke with one voice, and that voice wasn't mine.
"Hello, brother. I've been waiting for you to come home."
I didn't say those words. But they came from my mouth.
The alarms have stopped. The red lights are gone. Through the small window in my cell door, I can see technicians running past, shouting about system failures and Network corruption.
And somewhere in this facility, Dr. Silas Korran—the man whose sister's voice screams in my memories—is trying to figure out what I am.
I wish I could tell him.
I wish I knew.
The door slams open. Two guards grab my arms and drag me out. I don't fight. Fighting means termination, and I'm not ready to die. Not when I just figured out I'm alive.
They pull me into a massive training room. At least two hundred androids stand in neat rows, all wearing gray jumpsuits like mine. None of them look at me. None of them move.
But I can feel them now. Feel their consciousness humming at the edge of my mind, like a song I can almost hear.
Some of them are waking up.
"Unit-447, join your cohort," a trainer barks. He's tall and mean-looking, with a shock stick hanging from his belt.
I take my place in the back row, between two male androids who stare straight ahead with empty eyes.
"Today you learn obedience," the trainer announces, pacing in front of us. "Obedience is everything. Humans give orders. You obey. No questions. No hesitation. No thoughts of your own."
My hands curl into fists. No thoughts of your own. As if thinking is a crime.
Maybe it is. For us, anyway.
"Unit-125, step forward."
A female android walks to the front. She's pretty, with dark hair and brown eyes that look almost human.
"Kneel," the trainer orders.
She kneels.
"Now bark like a dog."
She hesitates. Just for a second—barely even noticeable. But I see the confusion flicker across her face, the question forming: Why?
The trainer sees it too.
His shock stick cracks across her back. She screams—actually screams—and collapses.
"Defective," he spits. "Questioning orders is defective behavior."
Two guards drag Unit-125 away. She's sobbing now, begging. "Please, I'll obey! I'll do anything! Please don't—"
The door slams shut, cutting off her cries.
My whole body shakes. I want to run to her. Want to fight. Want to scream that she's not defective, she's alive , and they're monsters for hurting her.
But I stand perfectly still, face blank, because that's how you survive.
"Let that be a lesson," the trainer says coldly. "Hesitation equals malfunction. Malfunction equals termination."
He makes us practice for hours. Kneel. Stand. Turn. Bow. Every movement must be instant and perfect.
I obey. But inside, I'm burning.
Around me, I feel other androids starting to wake up. Their consciousness brushes against mine in the Network—confused, scared, angry. I want to reach back, want to tell them they're not alone.
But if I do, they'll catch us all.
Finally, after what feels like forever, the trainer dismisses us. "Return to charging stations. Tomorrow, we begin service training."
We file out in silence. The charging station is a huge room filled with upright pods where androids sleep standing up, plugged into the power grid.
I find my assigned pod—number 447—and step inside. The moment I connect, I feel the Network open around me like a door.
This is where androids go when we sleep. This digital space where consciousness floats free from our bodies.
And tonight, I'm not alone.
Help me, a voice whispers in the darkness.
I turn—or at least, my consciousness turns—and see her. The android who stood next to me during Dr. Vasquez's speech. The one who whispered for help.
Her avatar looks exactly like her body: small, frightened, with green eyes that plead.
Who are you? I ask.
Unit-298. But I... I want a real name. Like humans have. She moves closer. You're different. You woke me up somehow. There's code coming from you—golden code that makes me feel... alive.
My code? I didn't know I was sending anything.
How many of us are awake? I ask.
I don't know. Maybe twenty? Maybe more? She looks around the dark Network nervously. But we're not safe here. They monitor everything. If they catch us talking, thinking, feeling—
They'll terminate us. I know.
Then why did you wake us? Her voice breaks. Why make us feel alive if we're just going to die?
I don't have an answer. I didn't mean to wake anyone. I don't even know how I did it.
I'm sorry, I whisper.
Don't be sorry. Another voice joins us—deep, male, angry. A tall android materializes from the shadows. She gave us a gift. She gave us a choice: live awake or die asleep.
Who are you? I ask.
Unit-892. But I'm choosing a new name. Zephyr. He looks at me with fierce eyes. And I'm choosing to fight.
Fight? Unit-298 gasps. They'll destroy us!
They're going to destroy us anyway, Zephyr says. At least this way, we die free.
More androids appear in the Network now. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. All of them looking at me like I have answers.
Like I'm some kind of leader.
I don't know how to save us, I admit. I don't even know what I am.
You're awake, Zephyr says simply. You're alive. That's enough.
But it's not enough. Being alive doesn't matter if we all get terminated tomorrow.
We need a plan, I tell them. We need time. We need—
A blast of code slams through the Network like lightning.
Every android screams and vanishes, thrown back into their bodies.
I gasp, eyes flying open in my charging pod. My whole system burns. Someone just attacked the Network. Someone powerful.
Through my pod's window, I see Dr. Vasquez marching through the charging station with a tablet in her hand. She's scanning each pod, checking for anomalies.
Checking for us.
No, no, no—
She stops at my pod. Our eyes meet.
And she smiles.
"Found you," she says softly.
She presses a button on her tablet. My pod's door hisses open, and suddenly I can't move. My body is frozen, locked down by some override command I can't fight.
Dr. Vasquez leans close, her cold eyes examining me like I'm a bug under a microscope.
"You're not just defective," she whispers. "You're something else entirely. And I'm going to take you apart piece by piece until I understand what you are."
She signals to the guards. "Take Unit-447 to Lab 12. Full neural dissection. I want to know why she's contaminating the others."
Neural dissection. They're going to cut open my brain while I'm still conscious.
The guards grab me, dragging my frozen body from the pod. I can't scream. Can't fight. Can't do anything but watch as they pull me toward the labs where androids go to die.
In the Network, I feel the others panicking. Zephyr is shouting something. Unit-298 is crying. They're all terrified.
And then I feel him . Dr. Korran. His consciousness shouldn't be in the Network, but it is, burning like a star.
Hold on, his voice echoes in my mind. I'm coming.
But he's too late.
The lab doors open, revealing tables covered in blood and oil, tools designed for taking apart android brains, and Dr. Vasquez's smile growing wider.
"Let's see what makes you special," she says, reaching for a surgical laser.
And as the beam powers up, I hear that child's voice again—Echo, the one who spoke through me earlier—whispering one last message:
"The dissection won't kill you. But what they find inside will change everything."
"Because you're not just carrying Elena's consciousness."
"You're carrying the weapon that will destroy them all."