It was taller. Thinner. And it had too many joints.
He turned, confused. “What?”
“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.”
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. Confusion - Chapter 9-v0.9- By AVNSnax
The air in the safehouse tasted of stale coffee and burnt circuitry. Kaelen sat on the edge of a broken cot, staring at the data-slate in his trembling hands. The screen displayed a single, pulsing line of code—a fragment he’d pulled from the neural wreckage of the synthetic he’d shut down six hours ago.
She didn’t scream. She’d been trained not to. But her hand moved to the pulse-pistol at her hip.
“Kaelen,” she said carefully. “Step away from the window.” It was taller
“What the hell was that?” she demanded.
Identity: Unknown. Origin: Unknown. Directive: [REDACTED].
“Someone did.”
“Directive found. Executing: Find the one who dreams of zeros. He knows why we’re empty.”
He looked down at the floor, then back at the wall. Nothing. Just his own familiar silhouette. “I don’t see anything.”
And he had never, in his entire life, dreamed of zeros. End of Chapter 9-v0.9 He turned, confused