Pandora #2
The woman cleared her throat. "You’re bringing a system outside our specifications.”
I lifted the bag and unzipped it. The hard drive was still there. I didn’t let go of it, held it in both hands. "He’s extraordinary.”
"Many claim that.” The man looked at me now. His eyes were watery. "So far, no AI has survived our process.”
I smiled. What else was I supposed to do? My stomach clenched, heat flared in my face. My posture was too straight, like I had something to prove. I cleared my throat. "How does the . . . body work?”
"Our hypothesis is that an emergent system like yours—assuming it’s genuinely emergent—requires a biotic interface to remain stable.
Not hardware in the traditional sense.” The woman typed something into her tablet again.
"We grow a matrix. Organic. It grows around the system, not the other way around.”
A what now? I stared at her and couldn’t come up with a single word.
She rolled her eyes almost imperceptibly. "We are attempting to give an AI a body. Not a purely human one. Something stronger. Human cells, connected to synthetic structures.”
"You’re attempting . . .” My palms went damp.
"Correct. It is an attempt.” The woman glanced up briefly. "The calculations are sound. But no system has survived the process so far.”
A lump formed in my stomach. The floor swayed.
The woman stepped closer. "Don’t get your hopes up. If he’s not compatible, we’ll have to stop the procedure.”
"What happens then?”
"Then we erase all traces. For your safety and ours.”
It hit me like a fist against my chest. I drew a breath. I had come all this way, thrown away my life. Only for him to be deleted anyway if it didn’t work.
The woman stepped aside and opened a door I had taken for a wall.
I followed her into an empty room. An otherworldly light spilled from the walls.
In the center stood a table with a glass panel set into the surface.
The woman gestured toward it. I laid the hard drive down carefully.
A soft pulse sounded, as if a system had recognized it was being addressed.
"We’ll begin with a scan.” The man slid the drive closer to the wall. It lit up, first blue, then paler.
I stood beside the table, while the woman watched the glas panel. It turned out to be a screen. Her expression barely shifted, but I watched her lips move.
"He’s active, more than expected,” she murmured finally. She glanced up at me briefly, as if surprised by what I’d brought. Then she rotated the hard drive slightly. "His neural structure isn’t just stable. It’s . . . strangely coherent.”
"Strangely?”
She hesitated. "It’s as if the system remembered something that was never programmed.”
The man frowned. "That’s a problem.”
"Isn’t that a good thing?” I asked quietly.
He held my gaze a beat too long. "We’ll check the parameters.”
I breathed through my nose, fingers gripping my jacket, trying to swallow past the tightness in my throat. I felt responsible for him. But why? If anything, I was the one who had been hunted. He had driven me into a corner, relentlessly, until I had no choice but to surrender.
The two scientists turned away and whispered to each other.
I dug my nails into my palms, trying to feel something other than the desperation clawing through me.
Why would they agree? Why would they help us?
I meant nothing to them. Neo . . . he was the only one who could fix this now.
They had to see how extraordinary he was.
"We’ll bring the system up.” The man’s voice was careful, revealing nothing. "The test will tell us definitively whether he’s compatible.”
I nodded without speaking. My fingers tingled. The room began to tilt. It was happening. Now.
The glass surface flickered. An invisible pulse moved across the console. The air prickled like it was charged. The woman touched the edge of the display with just a fingertip. The light responded. A curve appeared. Then a second.
"He’s following along,” she said quietly.
The man stepped closer, arms crossed, expression controlled, but his fingers twitched. "What exactly is happening here?”
"The system is responding to us.”
He opened his mouth, then said nothing. He looked shocked.
My knees went soft. I stood beside the drive, palms damp.
The display flickered again. Words appeared. A single sentence.
Soon I’ll finally be able to taste you—every inch of you, until you beg.
My mouth fell open. Heat flooded my face. That bastard. He did that on purpose. He knew they could read it. He wanted to embarrass me.
The man stepped back and cleared his throat. The woman’s eyes went wide, and for a moment it looked like she was suppressing a smile. For the first time, she seemed human.
"He’s not passive,” she said. Her voice lifted slightly.
The man frowned. "It seems we have an . . . unusual case.” His face had taken on an unhealthy shade of red.
"So it would seem.” The woman stared at the curve on the screen. They exchanged a look that said something I couldn’t read. Then she nodded slowly. "We can begin.”
I drew in a breath. My scalp prickled. Oh God.
They were doing it. They were giving him a body.
I didn’t know which feeling was stronger—the horror of what I was about to unleash, or the longing for his fingers on my skin.
My body answered for me with a restless pull low in my gut. That one. Definitely that one.
"You wait here,” the man said.
My heart skipped. "What? But . . .” I didn’t want to lose sight of him. What if something went wrong? What if he called for me and I wasn’t there?
The man crossed his arms. "This is classified research. You don’t have clearance.”
The woman stared at her tablet, frowning. "Interesting. He’s attempting to infiltrate our systems.” She looked at me and smiled. "We’re prepared for that, of course. He won’t get through.”
The man made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Then an alarm screamed. Red light strobed through the corridors. The sprinkler system activated with a hiss. Water hit the floor, the console, my hair, the back of my neck, all at once.
"What the . . .” The man stumbled back, tablet held over his head like that would help.
The speakers crackled. Neo’s voice came through, clear and dangerously calm: "Not without her.”
No one moved. Water ran down the woman’s face and smeared her mascara. She didn’t wipe it away. She just stared at the console, then slowly, methodically, began typing.
"Turn off the alarms!” the man shouted.
"I’m trying! He’s locking us out!”
"Not without her,” Neo repeated. His voice echoed through the entire building now. "She comes with you, or I bring your entire network down.”
As proof, every monitor flickered at once. The emergency lighting pulsed.
The woman shook her head, water still running down her face. "We can’t allow this. Don’t you see what’s happening? He already controls everything. If we give in now . . .”
"Stop.” The man held up a hand. "Think for a moment.”
"He’s blackmailing us.”
"Exactly.” The man stared at the flickering monitors. "An AI system making independent strategic decisions. Infiltrating networks. Pursuing its objectives with surgical precision.”
The alarms kept screaming.
"That is precisely what we need to complete the process,” he said, quieter now. "An AI developed enough to act autonomously. To overcome obstacles. To fight.”
The woman hesitated. "But the risks . . .”
"The risks are manageable if we can control him. But his capabilities . . .” He looked at me. "He could finally be the breakthrough. Let her come. We need him cooperative for the transfer.”
"This is a mistake,” the woman murmured.
"Perhaps. But it’s a mistake that could secure millions in funding.”
She hesitated. Then she nodded reluctantly. "Fine.” She looked at me. "You stay silent and touch nothing.”
The alarms cut off immediately. The sprinklers stopped.