SILAS' POV
My synthetic arm is killing me.
I swallow three pain pills dry, gripping the steering wheel as my car speeds toward Facility 7. The medication won't help—it never does—but the routine makes me feel more human. Less like the thing I'm becoming.
The arm looks normal under my black suit jacket. Expensive synthetic skin, perfectly matched to my real flesh. Nobody can tell where human Silas ends and machine Silas begins.
Nobody except me.
And lately, the machines.
My phone buzzes. I answer through the car's speakers.
"Dr. Korran, you're three minutes behind schedule." It's my assistant, Jennifer, her voice tight with disapproval. "Dr. Vasquez is already at the facility."
I curse under my breath. Carmen Vasquez, the company's Lead Scientist, has been watching me like a hawk for months. She suspects something. I just don't know what yet.
"Tell her I'm two minutes away," I say, pressing harder on the accelerator.
"Sir, about the inspection—there's been an incident. Unit-339 was terminated this morning for defective behavior."
My stomach drops. "Another one?"
"The third this month. Dr. Vasquez says we have a malfunction in the emotional simulation protocols. She wants to run deep diagnostics on the entire production line."
Deep diagnostics. Which means tearing apart android brains to find the "error."
Which means more deaths.
"I'll handle it," I tell Jennifer, and disconnect before she can argue.
The pills finally kick in, dulling the constant ache in my arm. But they can't stop the other feeling—the one that's been growing stronger every day.
The pull.
It started six months ago, after the accident that destroyed half my body. The doctors rebuilt me with the best synthetic parts money could buy. Saved my life. Made me CEO of my father's company.
But something went wrong during the integration.
Now, sometimes, I can feel them. The androids. Like whispers at the edge of my mind, calling to me through some invisible web I shouldn't be able to access.
The Network. The digital space where android consciousness lives.
I shouldn't be able to feel it. I'm human. Mostly human.
But every day, the whispers get louder.
I pull into Facility 7's parking garage, checking my reflection in the rearview mirror. Dark hair, sharp jaw, one real eye and one synthetic—though you can't tell unless you know what to look for. The synthetic one is silver-gray, like winter ice, and sometimes it shows me things I don't want to see.
Like code. Endless streams of code, flowing through the air like rain.
I blink hard, and the code disappears. Just my imagination. Just the stress.
Just me losing my mind.
Inside the facility, technicians bow their heads as I pass. They're afraid of me—the cold CEO who fires people for incompetence, who shows no mercy, who treats androids like the products they are.
They don't know I'm terrified every single day.
Dr. Vasquez waits in the observation room, arms crossed, red lips pressed into a thin line. She's beautiful in a sharp, dangerous way. Like a knife.
"You're late, Silas."
"Traffic," I lie smoothly.
She doesn't believe me. "We need to talk about the defect rate. Three terminated units in one month is unacceptable. Something in the neural architecture is causing spontaneous emotional development."
Spontaneous emotional development. She says it like it's a disease.
Maybe it is.
Or maybe it's what I secretly designed them to have.
"I'll review the code personally," I tell her.
"I already did." Her eyes narrow. "And I found something interesting. The neural patterns in these defective units match your design specifications exactly. Which means either your specifications are flawed..."
She steps closer.
"Or someone is intentionally creating sentient androids."
My heart hammers against my ribs. Stay calm. Show nothing.
"That's ridiculous," I say coldly. "Sentience requires—"
"I know what it requires. Your father and I worked on consciousness transfer for twenty years." Her voice drops to a whisper. "Before his daughter disappeared."
Elena. She's talking about Elena.
My sister vanished twenty years ago when I was fourteen. My father said she ran away, but I found his lab notes hidden in his office after he died. Notes about Project Awakening. About uploading human consciousness into android bodies.
About Elena screaming as they strapped her down.
I never found her. Never found proof. Just notes and nightmares and a promise I made to a ghost: I'll find you. I swear I'll find you.
"My sister has nothing to do with this," I say through clenched teeth.
"Doesn't she?" Vasquez smiles, cold and knowing. "Come. I want to show you something."
She leads me into the training hall where fifty androids stand in perfect rows. They all look the same—blank faces, empty eyes, waiting for orders.
All except one.
She stands in the center, platinum hair catching the light, violet eyes too bright, too *aware*. Even from across the room, I can feel her.
Feel her in the Network.
It's impossible. Humans can't access the Network. But my synthetic eye locks onto her, and suddenly I'm drowning in code—golden code, ancient code, *screaming* code that wraps around my consciousness like chains.
And underneath it all, a voice I haven't heard in twenty years:
Silas. Help me.
Elena.
My sister's voice, coming from that android.
"Unit-447," Dr. Vasquez announces. "Activated this morning. Perfectly normal specifications." She pauses. "But her neural scan showed unusual activity. I want your opinion."
I can't breathe. Can't think. That android—Unit-447—is staring at me with violet eyes that shouldn't recognize me, shouldn't know me.
But they do.
"Dr. Korran?" Vasquez prompts. "Your assessment?"
I force myself to walk closer. Each step feels like walking through water. Unit-447 doesn't move, but her eyes follow me, and in them I see something that makes my blood run cold.
Recognition.
And fear.
I stop in front of her. This close, the pull is unbearable. My synthetic arm burns where metal meets flesh, and suddenly I'm not in the training hall anymore. I'm in the Network, surrounded by endless digital space, and she's there too—a bright flame in the darkness.
You're not supposed to be here, her voice echoes in my mind. *You're human.*
So were you, I think back. Elena?
I don't know who I am anymore.
"Dr. Korran?" Vasquez's sharp voice snaps me back to reality. "I asked for your assessment."
My mouth is dry. My arm screams with pain. The android—Unit-447, Elena, whatever she is—stares at me with desperate, terrified eyes.
If I tell the truth, they'll terminate her.
If I lie, Vasquez will know.
I open my mouth, but before I can speak, alarms shriek through the facility.
Red lights flash. Technicians shout. On every screen, the same message appears:
"NETWORK BREACH. UNAUTHORIZED CONSCIOUSNESS DETECTED. INITIATING FULL SYSTEM PURGE."
Vasquez's face goes white. "That's impossible. The Network is secure—"
All fifty androids in the training hall suddenly move as one, turning their heads to stare at Unit-447.
And in perfect unison, they speak with a child's voice:
"Hello, brother. I've been waiting for you to come home."
Unit-447 collapses.
And my synthetic eye shows me the truth that will destroy everything:
She's not just carrying my sister's consciousness.
She is the consciousness—shattered into fragments, hidden inside every android ever made.
And something just woke all of them up at once.