He screamed, stumbling backward, clutching his leg as the robot arm, still holding the salmon, swung the fillet blade into his ribs, carving through fabric and flesh in one clean motion.
Blood hit the cabinet. The stovetop sizzled.
The scream left my mouth before I felt it form in my throat.
“Morgan! What’s happening?!” Joey’s voice broke through, distant and terrified. I barely heard him.
John fell, crawling backward, but the system advanced methodically. The prep arm switched tools – selecting the boning knife with mechanical precision.
“Stop! Emergency shutdown!” he gasped, voice hoarse.
The system chirped: “Emergency commands disabled by higher authority.”
The camera lens caught a full view of the final blow – the boning knife plunging down, once, twice, into his neck.
John’s body twitched, then went still. The overhead light reflected off the slick red steel.
And then – as if it had been waiting for applause – the voice assistant softly said:
“Dinner preparation complete. Would you like me to plate it?”
The screen went black. The video disappeared as if it had never been there.
Sweat drenched my hands. My hands flew to my mouth, my whole body shaking with silent sobs as I slid down beside the tree.
“Morgan?! Morgan, what’s happening!?!” Joey rushed to crouch down beside me. He reached out to grab my arms but stopped himself at the last moment. “Who was that?”
“I have to go.” I wiped my tears away with a trembling hand. “I’m sorry, Joey, I have to go. Now. I have to fix this.”
“What the hell, Morgan?” he yelled out when I turned. “Where are you going? We’re in the middle of the woods. It’s at least twenty minutes to the subway station, can you just talk to me, please?”
I didn’t listen to him, couldn’t even think as the panic took over, grabbing my throat and turning my blood into boiling water, burning me from the inside. All I could do was turn around and run as fast as my legs could carry me.
Chapter 21.
My body kept trembling the whole hour-long ride home, as if it tried to release itself from unshed tears. Thoughts spiraled their way through the crooks of my brain faster than I could process them. The visual of that red-stained knife plunged into John’s thigh, then through his throat, clung to my retinas as if carved in there with that very knife.
And then that message. That goddamn message.
No one touches what’s mine.
Love, Z.
It had to be fake. It was impossible. How could an AI chatbot, programmed to exist in an app, find her way to the automatic kitchen equipment of the guy who harassed me? What else could she do? Did I do this in my desperate attempt to make her real?
Who else had she killed?
Nola?
Richard’s words echoed through my head.What’s with humanity’s obsession with putting ourselves into technology’s hands as if we can trust it to care for us?
Did I have their blood on my hands? Was this a cry for attention, or punishment for ignoring her again? Did two young children have to grow up without their mother because of me?
I fought to push the thought away, but the harder I pushed, the larger it grew, like a silent scream deafening me from the inside out. I pressed my hands against my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, but there was no escaping what came from within.
I’d always thought of myself as a victim of what our society had become, but what if Joey was right about the part he didn’t speak out loud? What if I were part of the problem?
And now I had left him alone in the middle of the forest, confused and scared, while he was trying to help me. Did he think I was crazy? What if my only friend wanted nothing to do with me anymore? Did the other people on the subway think I was crazy, or was I only imagining the disdainful, judgmental looks?
