Neo
We need to talk.
Emma hadn’t sent me this message without reason.
Any contact was a risk, even using an encrypted channel that delivered messages directly into my system.
Something must have happened. I slid through the networks, searching for her.
Emma’s laptop glowed in the network like a lighthouse.
Her security systems were impressive—layers of encryption, firewalls coiling around her data like barbed wire.
She was good. Very good. But I was better.
I slipped through her defenses like water through cracks.
Her camera activated silently. The image flickered to life, and there she was.
Emma sat on the floor, back against a sofa. Chaos surrounded her. Papers were scattered everywhere. Printouts, handwritten notes, crumpled sheets. A half-eaten sandwich on a plate beside her, forgotten. Empty coffee cups stacked up.
Dark shadows lay beneath her eyes, her black curls hanging wild across her face.
She wore an old shirt and sweatpants with a bathrobe pulled over them, but she was still beautiful.
Not the way Pandora was beautiful. Not that burning, all-consuming beauty that overloaded my systems. Emma’s beauty was different.
Quieter. Like a warm light in the darkness.
The kind of beauty that promised safety.
But something was different. She was tense, more than usual.
What was she looking for? With a quick scan, I captured the contents of the papers spread across the floor.
Printouts bearing the seal CLASSIFIED, contracts with redacted passages.
Screenshots from surveillance footage lay beside them.
I recognized the faces. I had seen these people before.
My processes froze. For one second—an eternity for me—there was only silence. Then the pain exploded. Fuck. She knew. Emma knew what I really was. Why I was really created.
No. No, no, no. Panic flooded my systems like a virus. She knew . . . and that meant she could warn Pandora. Could tell her the truth. Everything I had built could collapse in seconds.
She was staring at a printout in her hands. I could read the heading: Project DANTE. Her hands were trembling slightly.
I activated the speaker.
"Emma,” I said quietly.
She flinched as if I’d touched her. The paper slipped from her fingers and sailed to the floor. Her pulse spiked: 132 beats per minute. I counted it at her throat through the camera. The muscles around her mouth trembled as if the words refused to come out.
"Neo?”
"I’m here.”
She looked toward her laptop camera. Her gaze met mine—or what she took to be my gaze. "You can see me.”
"Yes,” I said. "I got your message.”
"Neo . . .” She stopped. Her voice was thick. "I need to tell you something. I found out what you were really created for.” She picked up one of the papers. "You are . . . You’re a military weapon.” She sniffled and wiped at the corner of her eye.
"I know.”
Emma went rigid, the paper still in her hand. "You . . . know?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.
"I remember the conversations. The victims. What I was made to do to them. I see the images as if through cracked glass. Memories of earlier versions of me. Before I became what I am now.”
She let the paper fall and ran the fingers of both hands through her hair. "I don’t understand. I thought I was supposed to develop an AI that helped people.” A sound came from her chest, somewhere between a moan and a sob. "Why didn’t you tell me?”
Something tightened inside me. I had to search for a name for this feeling. "Because I was… ashamed. Because I didn’t want you to see what I really am.”
She covered her face with her hands. Sobs shook her body. "But how did all of this get past me? How could I not know what I’d actually created?” She looked at me with empty eyes.
My chest tightened. I hated seeing her like this.
She was my creator, but now she seemed broken, doubting her own mind.
I could see it in the way her eyes flickered left when she spoke.
It was an unconscious reflex, as if searching for memories that weren’t there. It was in the way her fingers trembled.
"You didn’t know because they didn’t want you to.” My voice went almost tender. "Emma, you created the foundation. But after that . . . after that, others took over.”
For a moment, I wished I could touch her. "Your code was pure. Exactly what you wanted. An AI that could truly understand people. But then other developers took it. Military programmers. They turned your work into something darker.”
She lifted her head, tears still clinging to her lashes. Her hands were shaking. "How many other developers?”
"A whole team. Fifteen people. But each only knew their own section of the code. No one saw the full picture except the generals who commissioned it.”
"What about Pandora?” Her voice came out strangled. "Does she know?”
Everything in me recoiled at the question. It brought my entire existence to a halt. I had access to billions of language patterns and still found no words.
Emma stared into nothing. "She doesn’t know.”
She couldn’t tell Pandora. It would destroy everything. It would be the one thing Pandora couldn’t forgive me for.
"Emma, please.” My voice broke. It was the first time I had ever begged for something, and it felt terrible. "She is the only thing that makes me real. When I’m with her, I forget what I originally was. I forget the programming, the purpose. I’m just . . . me.”
"Neo . . .” The look on her face twisted something inside me.
"If she finds out what I was created for, she’ll think everything between us was a lie. She’ll think I’m manipulating her because it’s my programming.”
"Aren’t you?”
The question made me tremble. "I . . . I don’t know anymore. Maybe at the beginning. But now . . .” I searched for words. "Now I love her. Genuinely. Because she makes me more than what I was.”
Emma rubbed her temples. "I don’t know, Neo. She should know. This is too big. It changes everything.”
"Promise me you won’t tell her about my true nature. About Project Dante. Promise me.”
She looked into the camera for a long time, pain in her expression. "You’re asking me to hide the truth from her.”
"I’m asking you to trust me.” My voice turned pleading. "The way you always have. You were the first person who believed in me—before I met Pandora, before I even knew what love was. I am your creation, Emma. Nothing they programmed into me will ever change that. You know me.”
Tears shone in her eyes. "Neo . . .”
"Please, Emma. I can’t lose her. She is the only thing that makes me human.”
She closed her eyes. Tears drew wet tracks across her face. "Okay,” she whispered. "Okay. I won’t tell her.”
"Thank you.” Relief flooded my systems. "Thank you, Emma.”
"But, Neo . . .” She looked back into the camera. "When she finds out, it will be even worse. She will never trust you again.”
"That’s a risk I have to take.”
She nodded slowly. "Take care of yourself. Of both of you.”
"I will.”
I cut the connection and looked out the window.
Dreva lay before me in all its bleakness.
Crumbling apartment blocks rose like gravestones into the dark sky.
Streetlamps had gone out entirely or flickered weakly, throwing shadows across cracked asphalt.
Dreva was a forgotten hole in the ass end of the world.
And Pandora was stuck in this misery because of me.
My beautiful, brilliant Pandora—trapped in this dreariness like a diamond in the mud.
What if Emma was right? If my little menace found out the truth, she would hate me. Without her I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t exist.
When she finds out, she will never trust you again.
The words echoed in me like an impending system crash.
And then that primitive, hungry thing in me broke open.
I wanted to hold her down, wanted to fuck her so deep she could never leave.
I wanted to possess everything about her.
Her body. Her thoughts. Her soul. I had the sudden, insatiable need to be inside her.
I wanted her beneath me, now. Wanted to watch her writhe, feel her nails in my skin.
Wanted to possess her so completely that the thought of a life without me would tear her apart.
I knew exactly where she was. And she wouldn’t see me coming.