The synthetic voice echoed inside my skull, vibrating through my jaw and teeth with deafening clarity. Unit Zero. The crimson light pulse in my wrist throbbed violently, sending an intense jolt of heat through my nerves. The numbness in my limbs evaporated instantly, replaced by a terrifying surge of cold, boundless energy.
I sat up so fast the air cracked around me.
Beside me, Leo gasped and recoiled, bumping against the shattered glass of a nearby tube. He looked at me with wide, terrified eyes—not because I was alive, but because the crimson glow from my wrist was casting jagged, monstrous shadows across my face.
«Mommy?» he squeaked, his voice trembling. «Your… your eyes.»
I reached up with a hand that didn’t feel like my own. My fingertips touched the rim of my pupils, feeling a faint, high-frequency hum beneath the skin. Looking down into a puddle of amber fluid on the steel floor, I didn’t see human eyes reflecting back. Two bright red, segmented lenses were spinning into focus within my irises, adjusting to the pitch-black basement like infrared scopes.
I wasn’t Version Fourteen. I was the prototype.
Suddenly, the shattered remains of Mark’s metallic frame gave a sickening twitch. The steel pistons in his chest groaned, and the dull, dead blue lights in his skull flickered once, twice, before turning a matching, ominous red. His neck snapped upright with a violent crunch of gears.
«Unit Zero detected,» Mark’s broken vocal synthesizer rasped, his crushed body dragging itself across the grating toward us. «Threat level: Absolute. Initiating containment protocol.»
I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I grabbed Leo with my left arm, hoisted him onto my hip, and leaped.
I cleared fifteen feet in a single bound, landing silently on the narrow cat-walk above. The raw power surging through my legs was intoxicating, but the sheer horror of what I was doing made my stomach churn. I wasn’t human. I had never been human.
Behind us, the massive steel doors at the top of the stairwell buckled completely, torn off their hinges with a deafening screech. A swarm of silent, red-eyed figures began pouring into the cavernous chamber, filling the catwalks above and below. Dozens of them—identical to the neighbors who had smiled at me at the grocery store, the mailman who delivered my letters, the police officer who gave Leo a wooden badge last summer.
They weren’t an army. They were my caretakers. And now, they were my hunters.
«Clara!» a weak voice gasped from the darkness far below the catwalks.
I looked down over the railing into the deep pit of hot machinery. Hanging from a twisted copper cable fifty feet below was my father, his fingers slipping off the slick metal. Blood covered his face, but his eyes were fixed on me in desperate pleading.
«The lockbox!» he shouted, his voice barely audible over the roaring boilers. «The bottom compartment! Pull the second latch!»
A red-eyed unit—a mannequin wearing the face of Mrs. Higgins, my sweet old neighbor—lunged at me from the shadows of the walkway, her fingers flexed like steel talons. Instinct took over. I spun around, kicked her square in the chest with enough force to warp her internal frame, and sent her plunging into the abyss.
I yanked the bronze lockbox off the floor where I had dropped it. My fingers flew to the base, feeling a hidden seam beneath the intricate floral engravings. I pressed the second latch.
The bottom plate of the box slid open with a metallic click, revealing a heavy brass key etched with an emblem I recognized instantly: the crest of the city hall at the center of town. Wrapped around the stem of the key was a tiny, handwritten note in my father’s faded script.
I unrolled it with shaking fingers, reading the words under the crimson glare of my wrist: The valley is not an incubator. It is a cage. You are the key to opening the vault beneath the square, but Leo is not your son. He is the original.
My heart stopped. The world around me seemed to freeze into absolute silence.
I looked down at the boy clinging to my neck. Leo was staring at me, his small face pale, his blue eyes clear and unblinking. He wasn’t crying anymore. In fact, he hadn’t cried since the liquid fire entered my veins.
I looked down at the boy clinging to my neck. Leo was staring at me, his small face pale, his blue eyes clear and unblinking. He wasn’t crying anymore. In fact, he hadn’t cried since the liquid fire entered my veins.
«Mommy,» Leo whispered, his voice suddenly stripped of all childish emotion, flattening into a tone that was eerily calm, cold, and precise. «You shouldn’t have opened that.»
Before I could process his words, Leo reached into his small jacket pocket and pulled out a sleek, silver cylinder. With a smooth, mechanical motion no five-year-old child could ever possess, he pressed the tip of the cylinder directly against the side of my neck.
A sharp hiss of compressed gas echoed through my head.
My vision instantly fractured into thousands of red, static-filled pixels. The strength drained from my legs, and I collapsed onto the cold steel grate, the brass key slipping from my paralyzed fingers and falling down into the darkness.
Leo stood over me, looking down at my helpless frame with an expression of cold, detached authority.
«Reset sequence bypassed,» Leo spoke, his voice echoing not just in the room, but directly through the speaker embedded inside my own brain. «Unit Zero fully synchronized. Initiate phase two.»
From the shadows all around the sub-basement, the dozens of red-eyed units halted their advance. Simultaneously, every single one of them dropped to their knees, bowing their heads toward the small boy standing over me.
Leo stepped over my body, his small shoes crunching on the shattered glass, and walked toward the edge of the platform. He looked out over the endless dark facility, then turned his head back to look at me, a subtle, terrifying smile playing on his lips.
«Wake up, Clara,» he whispered softly into my mind. «It’s time to meet your creator.»
Far beneath us, deep within the foundations of the building, a massive hydraulic lock turned with a thundering roar, and the floor beneath my body began to sink into the earth.