Elias walked toward the exit of the server room. His wet boots didn't make that annoying sloshing sound anymore. He was walking differently now, stepping on the balls of his feet like he was balancing on a wire. He didn't feel the heavy weight of his soaked clothes, and he didn't feel the sting in his palms where the crowbar had ripped his skin. All of that felt like it belonged to someone else.
He reached the heavy fire door and didn't even hesitate. He didn't look for a handle or a scanner. He just placed his hand flat against the metal and waited. Deep inside the door, the electronic lock hummed, recognized the frequency of the chip in his brain, and popped open.
He stepped out into the hallway.
Two security guards were standing at the far end of the corridor, near the elevators. They were bored, leaning against the wall and looking at their phones. When the heavy door clicked open, they both looked up at the same time.
"Hey! Who's there?" the taller one yelled, reaching for the taser on his belt. "Floor's off-limits, pal!"
The old Elias would have put his hands up. He would have started stuttering, trying to explain the tunnel and the red marker. But this Elias just kept walking. He didn't speed up, and he didn't slow down. He looked at the guards, and for a second, his vision flickered with red data. He could see the brand of their tasers, the battery life in their phones, and the exact heart rate thumping in their necks.
"Stop right there!" the guard shouted again, pulling the taser out.
Elias didn't stop. He reached out and touched the metal panel of a fire alarm on the wall as he walked past it. He didn't pull the lever. He just pressed his fingers against the casing.
Suddenly, every light in the hallway exploded.
The bulbs shattered in a spray of glass, plunging the hall into total darkness. The guards yelled, scrambling for their flashlights, but before they could even click them on, the fire sprinklers hissed to life. Cold water blasted down from the ceiling, soaking everything.
In the chaos, Elias moved. He didn't run; he just glided through the dark. He passed right between the two guards. They were waving their arms and coughing from the water, but they didn't even see him. He was like a ghost in the machine. He reached the elevator bank and pressed the button.
The doors slid open instantly. He stepped inside and turned around. The guards were still shouting in the dark, their flashlights cutting through the spray of the sprinklers, looking for a man who wasn't there anymore.
As the elevator doors started to close, Elias looked at his reflection in the polished silver of the door. He didn't recognize the person staring back. His face was perfectly still. No twitching, no blinking. He looked like a statue.
The elevator didn't go down to the lobby. It started going up.
He was headed for the penthouse. That was where the Director's office was. That was where the "real" files on Clara were kept—the ones they didn't put on the servers.
The elevator dinked as it reached the top floor. The doors opened to a massive room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, the city looked like a toy set, glowing with millions of tiny lights. The police drones were still buzzing around down there, but up here, it was dead quiet.
The Director was sitting behind a massive glass desk. He was an old man with white hair and a suit that cost more than Elias's apartment. He didn't look surprised. He just looked disappointed.
"I told them the Scrubber wasn't ready for a full upload," the Director said, sighing as he closed a laptop. "You're making a mess, Elias. Or whatever you are now."
Elias walked toward the desk. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the red marker. He slowly took the cap off and set it on the glass desk with a soft clack.
"I'm not Elias," he said. His voice didn't have any emotion in it at all. It was flat and cold, like a recording. "Elias is the part you tried to delete. I'm the part that remembers why you did it."
The Director reached for a button under his desk, but Elias was faster. He didn't hit the man. He just slammed his hand down on the laptop.
The screen of the computer didn't just break—it turned bright, bleeding red. Every light in the office started to flicker. The city lights outside the window began to wink out, block by block, as the "Scrubber" program started to spread from Elias's mind into the building's main power grid.
"Where is she?" Elias asked.
The Director looked out the window at the dying city and swallowed hard. For the first time, he looked scared. "You don't want to know. If you find her, the program will finish. You'll disappear. There won't be anything left of you."
Elias leaned over the desk until he was inches away from the man's face.
"Good," Elias whispered. "I'm tired of being a backup."