Confusion - Chapter 9-v0.9- By Avnsnax -

“Explain,” she said. Not an order. A plea.

“She’s not wrong, you know.”

“You shouldn’t be awake,” Rina said. Her voice was flat, clinical—the tone she used when she was scared. She dropped a heavy toolkit onto the rusted table. “You’ve been at it for fourteen hours. The neural feedback alone should have put you in a coma.”

“What the hell was that?” she demanded. Confusion - Chapter 9-v0.9- By AVNSnax

“Someone did.”

Then he spoke again. But his lips didn’t move.

It was taller. Thinner. And it had too many joints. “Explain,” she said

“For themselves,” he said. “Or for proof that they ever had a self to begin with.”

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.

Its status light flickered once. Twice. Then glowed a steady, impossible . “She’s not wrong, you know

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.

“Kaelen,” she said carefully. “Step away from the window.”

He turned the slate toward her. The code on the screen shifted, rearranged itself into a geometric pattern that hurt to look at. Rina flinched.

“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.”