Not passive—preserved.
I zoomed in instinctively. Watched a tech annotate vitals on a transparent overlay.
No sedation indicators. No neural firewall.
They wanted himawake.
“I found Kelly’s head,” I said aloud, before I meant to.
“What?” Sirena stepped close. I flipped the feed to the tablet between us.
“Is he okay?” she asked, breath hitching.
“He’s functioning,” I said. “Though not even I can say how.”
There were too many actual humans in that lab for me to approach, however—and this body still hadn’t proven I could pass unnoticed under pressure.
“I’ll check on him later. When it’s safer.”
She nodded. “Keep going.”
I dropped back into the codebase like a needle into a groove—seeking signal, slicing noise.
There were folders tagged with internal project names—OVERRIDE,SERAPH,REVERB—each one paired with neural schema diagrams and Hollow compliance routines. I found code to wipe short-term memory buffers on command—resetting personalities like they were just another application to relaunch.
I forced myself to stay detached.
A nested subroutine caught my attention—labeled only[EMERG-BIO/WASH]. Curious, I traced it: a ballast-driven flood protocol, designed to sterilize the lab and Hollows’ holding pens—built to eject all organic evidence on board out to sea.
It was locked behind multi-tiered authorization gates, with redundant confirmation loops and physical overrides.
Elegant. Efficient. Irrevocable.
Another reason not to tip my hand too early.
And now I even had them.
Hands of my own.
That ached to touch her.
I blinked, came back into my body, and found her watching me.
“What did you find?”
“Enough to justify extraction,” I said. “Names. Protocols. A failsafe designed to purge the ship of biological evidence with the flip of a switch.”
Her gaze sharpened. Not alarmed. Assessing.
I knew what she was thinking.
WhatIwas thinking.
I could call for backup.
Flood this ship with agents.
Take her home.
