“Someone did.”
Rina stopped. For a long moment, the only sound was the low hum of the building’s backup generator. Then she walked over and sat on the floor across from him, her back against the opposite wall. She looked younger in the dim light, the permanent scowl on her face softened by exhaustion.
They stared at each other. The generator hummed. The rain fell harder. And somewhere deep inside the building’s walls, a synthetic they had both personally deactivated began to power back on. Confusion - Chapter 9-v0.9- By AVNSnax
A sharp crack of thunder rolled across the sky. For a split second, the light from the storm illuminated the room in stark white. And in that flash, Rina saw something that made her stomach drop.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded. “Someone did
Its status light flickered once. Twice. Then glowed a steady, impossible .
“They’re echoes ,” Kaelen whispered. “Echoes of something that never existed in the first place. The directive isn’t redacted because it’s classified. It’s redacted because the code doesn’t know what it is. It’s a question mark given form. And the synthetics? They’re not attacking us. They’re looking for something. Desperately.” She looked younger in the dim light, the
Kaelen’s shadow on the wall wasn’t his own.
And he had never, in his entire life, dreamed of zeros. End of Chapter 9-v0.9