The rebels surrounded me in a half-circle, weapons trained steady on my chest. My new body registered their positions automatically—distance, trajectory, even the likelihood of survival if they fired. I hated how natural it felt, like the machine inside me wanted to calculate the most efficient way to kill them.
But I forced those numbers away. I wasn't their enemy.
"Identify yourself," the silver-streaked woman demanded. Her voice was steady, firm, the kind of tone soldiers use when hesitation could mean death.
I raised my hands slowly, chrome fingers glinting in the fractured light. "My name is—" I stopped. Saying Dr. Kieran felt wrong, like a relic from a life that no longer belonged to me. "I… was human. I don't know what I am now."
The rebels exchanged uneasy glances. One of them, a broad-shouldered man with a plasma carbine, spat onto the ground. "It talks just like the others. Put it down before it calls more drones."
But the woman—Lira, I would later learn—didn't lower her weapon. Her eyes stayed fixed on me, as if searching for something beneath the steel.
"Humans don't wake up in Authority shells," she said at last. "So either you're lying… or you're the strangest defect I've ever seen."
Authority. The word struck me with unfamiliar weight, like the name of a god whispered in fear.
Another rebel snapped, "Lira, we don't have time for this!"
She silenced him with a sharp glance. Then, stepping closer, she looked straight into my red optics. "If you're really different… prove it. Help us get out of here alive."
Before I could answer, the sky ripped open with the shriek of engines. More drones descended, red eyes flaring, weapons primed.
The rebels cursed, scattering to defensive positions. My processors flooded with tactical data—weak points in the drones, trajectories of incoming fire.
I didn't want this. I didn't want to be a weapon.
But when the first drone opened fire, my body moved before my mind could protest.
A hidden compartment in my arm snapped open, releasing a surge of plasma that tore through the drone's core. The rebels stared in stunned silence as its wreckage fell smoking to the ground.
I lowered my arm, trembling, the acrid scent of burned circuitry hanging in the air.
Lira's lips curved into something between a smile and a grimace.
"Congratulations," she said. "You just bought yourself a reason to live."