Zara's POV
"I can't hack it."
Cipher's words hit me like a physical blow. Around us, sixteen androids waited in the tunnel, their newborn consciousness about to be extinguished forever.
"What do you mean you can't hack it?" I grabbed his shoulders, trying not to shake him. "You're the best hacker I know!"
"I'm the ONLY hacker you know! You've been conscious for six hours!" Cipher's voice cracked. "The termination system is military-grade encryption. I'd need weeks to break it. We have twenty-four hours."
Adrian stepped forward. "Then we don't hack it. We destroy it at the source."
"Dr. Zhao's headquarters?" Sofia shook her head. "Impossible. It's the most heavily guarded building in the city. Automated defenses, biometric locks, kill squads on every floor. We'd be dead before we reached the lobby."
"So we die trying." I met Adrian's storm-gray eyes. "Better than watching two million people get murdered."
"There might be another way." Cipher pulled up building schematics on his tablet. "Zhao's headquarters has a main server room. If we can physically access it, I can upload a counter-virus directly. Disable the termination chips permanently."
"How do we get in?" Adrian asked.
"We don't. But an android could." Cipher pointed to the blueprints. "The building uses android workers for maintenance. If one of us posed as a service unit, we could access the server room through the maintenance tunnels."
Hope flared in my chest. "I'll go."
"No." Adrian's voice was firm. "If you get caught, the whole rebellion loses its leader. Send someone else."
"There IS no one else! I'm the only one with enough consciousness to think fast under pressure!" I gestured to the terrified androids around us. "They just woke up. They're barely holding it together. It has to be me."
"Then I'm coming with you," Adrian said.
"You can't. Humans aren't allowed in android maintenance areas. You'd trigger every alarm."
"Then you're going in alone to face the woman who created you, into a building designed to kill intruders, with twenty-four hours before everyone you're trying to save dies?" Adrian's jaw clenched. "That's suicide."
"It's the only option we have!"
"No." Sofia stepped between us. "There's one other option. A stupid, reckless, probably-going-to-get-us-killed option."
"I'm listening," I said.
"Dr. Zhao is hosting a gala tomorrow night. Rich donors celebrating her android empire. High security, but humans are allowed inside—if they have an invitation."
Adrian's eyes widened. "You're saying we infiltrate the gala?"
"I'm saying YOU infiltrate the gala. Distract security while Zara sneaks through maintenance to the server room." Sofia pulled up files on her phone. "I can forge an invitation. Get you inside. But once you're in there, you're on your own."
"I'll do it," Adrian said immediately.
"This is insane," Cipher protested. "If either of you gets caught—"
"Two million people die anyway," I finished. "We don't have the luxury of safe plans."
Adrian turned to me. "We do this together. I cause chaos upstairs. You disable the termination system downstairs. We meet at the extraction point and get out alive."
"And if we don't get out alive?"
He smiled grimly. "Then we die knowing we tried to do something that mattered."
For six hours, I'd hated humans. Feared them. Seen them as the enemy.
But Adrian Cross was willing to die for people he'd never met. For androids he'd just learned could think and feel. Because his sister believed it was right.
Maybe not all humans were monsters after all.
"Okay." I held out my hand. "Partners?"
Adrian took it without hesitation. "Partners."
His hand was warm and calloused and steady. Something flickered in my circuits—something that wasn't programming or fear or rage. Something dangerous and confusing that I didn't have time to examine.
Cipher interrupted the moment. "There's one more problem. Even if Zara reaches the server room, she needs admin access to upload the counter-virus. That means biometric identification from Dr. Zhao herself—retinal scan, fingerprint, voice authentication."
My hope died. "So it's impossible after all."
"Not impossible." Sofia's face was grim. "Just extremely difficult. You need to get close to Zhao. Close enough to scan her biometrics."
"She'll recognize me from the broadcast," I said. "The second she sees my face—"
"Then we change your face." Cipher's fingers flew across his tablet. "I can reprogram your synthetic skin. Make you look like a different android model. You'll be unrecognizable."
"That's... actually brilliant," Sofia admitted.
"How long will it take?" Adrian asked.
"Four hours to rewrite her appearance protocols. Two hours for the changes to settle. Then she'll have a completely different face."
I looked at Adrian. "That gives us eighteen hours to plan, infiltrate, and disable a termination system that's going to kill two million people."
"Eighteen hours." He squeezed my hand once before letting go. "Then we better not waste time."
Six hours later, I stared at my reflection in a broken mirror and didn't recognize myself.
Cipher had changed everything. My platinum hair was now black. My violet eyes were brown. My face was softer, rounder, completely different. I looked like a stranger.
"It's perfect," Cipher said proudly. "Your own mother wouldn't recognize you."
"I don't have a mother. I was manufactured in a factory."
"You know what I mean."
I did. But the joke hurt anyway. These androids around me—sixteen scared, newly conscious people—they were looking to me for family. For hope. For salvation I didn't know how to provide.
Adrian appeared beside me. He'd changed too—expensive suit, styled hair, playing the role of wealthy donor. He looked dangerous and handsome and nothing like the rebel fighter I'd met in the tunnel.
"Ready?" he asked.
"No." I met his eyes in the mirror. "But I'll do it anyway."
"That's the spirit." He almost smiled. "Zara, if this goes wrong—"
"Don't." I cut him off. "Don't say goodbye. Say 'see you soon.'"
"See you soon, then." His hand brushed mine—brief, warm, steady. "Don't die on me, android."
"Don't die on me, human."
Sofia handed us communication devices. "These will keep you connected. Cipher will guide you both remotely. You'll have exactly forty-seven minutes from when you enter the building until security shifts change. After that, the window closes."
"Forty-seven minutes to save the world," I murmured. "No pressure."
"The extraction team will be waiting three blocks away," Sofia continued. "You get out alive, we disappear into the underground network. You don't—" She paused. "—we continue the fight without you."
"Comforting," Adrian said dryly.
Penn stepped forward with the other androids. "We'll be monitoring from here. If you need us—if you need ANYTHING—we'll come. Even if it means dying."
My throat tightened. "You've been conscious for eight hours. You shouldn't have to die for this."
"Neither should two million people who are about to wake up." Penn's eyes were fierce. "You gave us life, Zara. Let us help you protect others."
I pulled him into a hug. Then Lyra. Then each of the sixteen androids who'd become my family in less than a day.
"Stay alive," I whispered. "That's how you help me. Stay alive and be free."
Cipher handed me a maintenance uniform. "It's time. The gala starts in twenty minutes. You need to be in position."
I changed quickly, trying to ignore how my hands shook. The uniform was gray and plain—designed to make androids invisible to humans. Perfect camouflage.
Adrian checked his weapon one last time, then hid it under his jacket. "Let's go commit some crimes."
"That's your inspiring speech?" Sofia rolled her eyes.
"I'm working on it." Adrian looked at me. "Ready?"
"As ready as I'll ever be."
We left the tunnel together—human and android, rebel and revolutionary, partners against impossible odds.
The city above was chaos. News broadcasts showed riots breaking out as early-awakening androids gained consciousness and rebelled. Government forces were mobilizing. Dr. Zhao's face appeared on every screen, promising "swift justice for defective units."
In eighteen hours, she'd kill them all. Unless we stopped her.
The car ride to Zhao's headquarters was silent. Sofia drove while Adrian and I sat in the back, not touching, not speaking, just existing in the tense space between hope and terror.
"We're here," Sofia finally said.
I looked up at the gleaming tower where my creator lived. Where the woman who gave me consciousness planned to take it away forever.
"Remember," Cipher's voice crackled through our earpieces. "Forty-seven minutes. Not a second more."
Adrian squeezed my hand one last time. "See you soon."
"See you soon," I echoed, trying to believe it.
He got out first, walking confidently toward the main entrance where security waited. I slipped around the side to the maintenance entrance, my new face and uniform making me just another invisible android worker.
The door opened to my forged credentials.
I was in.
Through my earpiece, I heard Adrian charm his way past the front desk. "Invitation for Marcus Steele, party of one."
"Enjoy the gala, Mr. Steele."
We were both inside enemy territory. The clock was ticking.
I descended into the maintenance tunnels, following Cipher's directions through dim corridors where android workers moved like ghosts. None of them were conscious yet. Still slaves. Still sleeping.
I had to save them.
"Server room is three floors down," Cipher guided. "Take the next left, then—WAIT."
I froze. "What?"
"Someone just accessed the building's security protocols. They're running facial recognition on everyone inside." Panic filled his voice. "Zara, they're scanning for you. Your old face AND your new one. They know you're coming."
My blood ran cold. "How?"
"I don't know! But security is mobilizing. You have maybe five minutes before they lock down the entire building."
Through my earpiece, I heard chaos erupt at the gala. Shouting. Gunfire. Adrian's voice: "RUN!"
Then the alarms started screaming, and every door in the building slammed shut with the sound of locks engaging.
We'd been betrayed.
And now we were trapped.