The old me would never have been able to get past the armed guard they had stationed in The Cave. Especially malnourished and with no weapons.
But my fabricated training made me pretty resourceful. Turns out there are tons of things in a biotech lab that you can use to kill a man, especially if you’ve had years of muscle memory synthetically programmed into you.
After that, it had been a mad dash to the exit while the entire campus was down. NOVA assured me the foggy memories I had of a remote cottage in the mountains were real and that I should head there.
Which I did, and I lay low there for a while, licking my wounds, healing, and then finally, planning my revenge.
NOVA had worked with me extensively to tease out which of my memories were real and which were not. Being that the old me had been the one to build her, I trusted her implicitly.
It had taken me a few weeks to safely source the weapons and tools I needed to execute this plan without signaling my location to Dr. Grey, and it had taken me even longer to gain enough muscle and weight to feel like I could actuallyexecutethe plan.
Now, here I was, balls deep in my last hope at survival, because if all this went to shit, there was nothing left for me here, and I would stop fighting for good.
“The memories I have on Amygdala Ave… those are real?” I asked NOVA quietly as I watched Milo and Seb disappear into NeuroWell.
“Yes. Those are real.”
“I want to take him through there on the way out. I want him to see it.”
“You know that’s dangerous. We have no idea how he will react. Even what you did last night—That was careless.”
“I wanted to see if it would make me feel something.”
“Did it?”
Remembering how my entire body had lit on fire the second our lips had touched. The way his fingers had tenderly mapped my face and dug into my hair like he was desperately trying toseeme, despite being nearly blind without his glasses…
The earth-shattering explosion of emotion in my chest that erupted and swelled with each tiny pant he made as he kissed me back…
Last night was the first time I could remember feelinganythingother than pain, and now I was greedy for it. Feelings of any kind were foreign to me. Maybe they’d once been commonplace… but now… now my skull was a hollow shell full of horrors and my heart a forgotten corpse.
“I dragged him into this. He’s my responsibility. I need to get him out,” I finally said, and NOVA sighed. Not like she was annoyed with me, but like she was mourning for me. I knew she was an AI, but I often suspected she’d achieved some level of sentience. Why else would she have come back for me? I hadn’t programmed her to do that.
Neither of us ever acknowledged it. I just treated her like she could feel, and she did the same for me, even though I wasn’t sure either of us actually could.
“I know that too. We’ll get him out.”
I nodded, dropping my binoculars and checking the surveillance feeds for my base in the mountains. Milo’s mother was happily making herself a pot of tea in the kitchen, and I smiled.
She kept asking for him, and I kept promising he would come visit her soon.
I really hoped I didn’t have to break that promise.
Seb had taken me in through NeuroWell, which was filled with quiet, almost monotonous researchers working away on their Neurovance Laptops.
There wasn’t one plant on this floor, and all the windows were shuttered closed, as if the manager on this floor was worried these poor people would be distracted by something as simple as sunlight.
I decided on the spot that if I was meant to be the leader of this department, I would look into brightening up this depressing place for these poor people.
Everyone looked up as we entered, and I expected Seb to acknowledge or even greet them, but instead, he eyed them warily, and they eyed him right back.
The entire floor sat quietly, almost eerily so, as Seb led me through their desks toward another elevator at the back of the office.
Once inside, he hit the ‘down’ button, and my stomach floated to my chest as we sped down several floors to the basement.
“Why was everyone so… quiet?”
“No speaking rule. Between 9-5, there’s no talking in workspaces unless it’s for a mandatory meeting, and those need to be held in designated rooms,” Seb said, and I frowned.
