Page 54

EON

M y hands were still shaking as I got ready to meet Hiromi. All I could think about was Cy—the way he’d looked at me, how panicked I’d been when his heart had stopped. The ebb and flow of his Flux with mine, a primal rhythm that spoke to the baser parts of me.

As I went to change my hair back to that safe, natural brown, I hesitated. That wasn’t who I was anymore. I watched sparks and stars swirl in my eyes, my Flux dancing in a way I usually suppressed.

It had felt good to let it all go in the Den, to let nothing but anger drive me as I exploded with power. Even on the data center job, I’d never let myself release like that. I’d never had him to show me how good it could feel.

I threw on the only light-colored outfit I owned, the pale creams and silver edging of the structured dress felt like a lie. I left my hair lavender with the two little buns I preferred at the top. I was getting tired of hiding the real me.

I met Hiromi at a ritzy, trendy restaurant in the Sky District.

They’d ditched the saturated colors of the other districts, opting for polywood veneers and sleek white marble.

Every light was a soft, warm white, hiding the filth that permeated everything in Neo Stellaris.

Even the Sky District was tainted, no matter how much they tried to scrub it away.

I scanned the crowd until I saw Hiromi stand from a table in the corner, smiling as he approached. His dark hair was perfectly tousled over his forehead, and he towered over the crowd.

“E, your hair! I almost didn’t recognize you. It looks fantastic.” He reached for my hand, and I offered it. He squeezed my fingers lightly before leading me back to our table. I shrugged off my coat and hung it on the back of my chair. He waited to sit until I was seated.

“I ordered some of that new corn-based wine, I hope that’s all right?”

“Of course.” I heard a grunt over my Vysor’s comms.

“You’re here for the translation. That’s it,” Cy said.

I couldn’t help my grin. I tapped a message to him on my thigh under the table.

Me: Jealous?

“In your dreams. We don’t have much time left.”

Me: Oh, Cy. If only you knew.

I echoed his words back to him, and I heard him choke.

“What made you smile like that, E?” Hiromi asked.

I looked back at him. “Just always happy to see you. Besides, you have something for me, right?”

Hiromi nodded. “You should know, this wasn’t easy. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. “That’s what made it fun, right?”

He chuckled. “Yes, but you should know I don’t do this for just anyone, E.”

I held his stare until his dark eyes flicked to my lips and the faintest flush crept up his neck. He cleared his throat.

“Right. So, the translation.” He pulled his palm device from his pocket and flicked the data to my Vysor. I watched as the words scrolled across my screen, the illuminated characters painting a very unsettling picture.

“So, it didn’t have roots in any model language. I had to use a model based on Proto-Afroasiatic before I could even get results. But once I did…”

He tapped his device and the results changed. My mind was racing. How was this possible?

“It looks like—”

“Code,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“Yeah, how’d you recognize it so fast?”

“Because I wrote it.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Cy’s voice snapped in my ear, jarring me out of the trance I’d fallen into while staring at the glowing symbols on my screen.

Hiromi looked puzzled. “How can that be? This screams AI. Nothing else could’ve created the encryption and language model. Even my programs struggled with it, which means the AI that wrote this has to be beyond even the highest-level corporate programming—”

I stood up.

“I’m sorry, Hiromi. I can’t explain it either.” I grabbed my coat from the back of the chair as I heard him rise behind me. “I know I promised you a drink, but this can’t wait. Raincheck?”

He just gave me that gentle smile he always wore.

“Of course, E. I know how deadlines can be. I just hope you won’t make me wait too long.

I let you get away once. I’m not going to let that happen again.

” He stepped toward me, his dark eyes burning in a way that caught me off guard.

He gently grabbed my fingers before lifting them to his lips, planting a soft kiss on my knuckles.

I felt my cheeks heat as he held my gaze the entire time. “Hiromi…”

“Stop eye-fucking each other. Get your ass back here and explain what the fuck is happening.”

I ground my teeth. “Soon. I promise.” I pulled my hand back and turned before I could get any redder. Then a thought struck me, one I couldn’t ignore.

“DITA, disable connection.”

DITA chimed affirmatively in my ear, severing the link to Cy before I spoke again.

“Hiromi, you’re pyroteknik. Have you ever met someone your Flux resonated with?”

“Resonate? Like in the movies? That’s not a real thing. If that’s what you’re worried about—”

“No. Thanks again, Hiromi.” I left without looking back.

Somehow, Cy had convinced me to review the translation with him at POM Headquarters.

I hadn’t fought it. I knew having their computational resources would help with whatever the hell was going on.

The upper floors had been empty when we arrived—not uncommon on a Friday evening at 9 p.m.—but Basement Six had been bustling with activity.

POM Security never seemed to have off hours.

Cy dragged me into a small conference room, not saying much, which had me on edge.

There was a couch in the cramped space, and I sat back on it, tension still curled in my body.

“So, you going to explain what the hell is going on?”

I curled my lip at him but threw the information Hiromi had given me up on the holoprojector in the center of the room.

The translated code scrolled by slowly. It had been over six months since I’d seen it, but I’d stared at it for three years before that—I wouldn’t forget it.

“This code. It was from a project I worked on with Professor Tanaka at Elysium, back when I was in her lab. It was…off the books, let’s say. The professor was convinced we could digitize the human consciousness—said it would change everything. I thought it was bogus, but it was—”

“An interesting puzzle?” Cy chimed in, smirking as he glanced at the screen. “What was the end goal?”

“Same one people have been seeking since the beginning of time: immortality. Your brain, stored on a chip that could be backed up and safeguarded.”

“Surprised your rebellious professor was interested in something like that.”

Something about his words tugged at my mind. A clue I didn’t want to see. A truth I didn’t want to know. I tucked it away and forged on.

“She wasn’t really, but I know she got big funding for it. Probably from some bioTech corp—hell, maybe even from POM. She had to keep the lights on. Anyway, I worked on it for three years. It was all theoretical, of course, and unfinished…but it looks like someone tried to finish it.”

“Tried to?”

I shrugged. “I mean, it makes sense in theory, right? The human brain is a collection of electrical impulses—not so different from those on a computer chip. If we could translate that to machine language, why couldn’t we copy it over?

In fact, I made a copy of my brain. Took for-fucking-ever, but it was all mapped out.

My whole life, reduced to 2.5 petabytes. ”

“But you never got it to work?”

I shook my head. “No, there was always something missing. Always frustrated the hell out of the professor. But I think it was…”

Cy looked at me then, his eyes searching. He raised his eyebrows in silent question.

“I think it was…the soul. I could download my brain onto a drive, but it didn’t make it alive . Didn’t make it me . We could never make an AI that could read the data like a personality construct. They all turned out the same.”

“Not enough data?” Cy asked.

“Too much. Too many erratic thoughts and patterns that don’t correlate with brain activity.

That was the theory, anyway. The AIs all just sort of crashed in on themselves or devolved into very basic personalities.

You can teach an AI to act like you, maybe even think like you.

But it’s not you . Definitely not something alive. Not sentient.”

“Legal will be thrilled to hear that, with all the AI rights protests going on.” His eyes flashed and his lip curled. “Never took you for the religious type—believing in souls.”

He was teasing me.

I huffed. “I’m not. There are just…some things we can’t explain yet. Doesn’t mean we won’t be able to someday. Hell, look how much the world’s changed in just fifty years.”

He looked back at the screen, and his mood darkened. “This doesn’t look good for you. Your code, plastered all over the walls of our poor dead CTO’s apartment.”

It was my turn to grunt. “I know. But you know I had nothing to do with this.” He did. Didn’t he?

He waved a hand, still not looking at me. There was no threat in it.

“So, you said someone modified it. What did they do?”

“There is literally no greater hell than sifting through someone else’s undocumented code.” I ran a hand down my face. “You’ve gotta give me a few hours. I’ll get DITA working on recovering the data from the Den too. Would go a lot faster if I could get some of POM’s fancy GPUs freed up.”

To my surprise, he didn’t fight me. “I’ll go talk to Tex about it. Don’t leave this room, you got it?” He finally looked at me, and I didn’t like how happy I was to see him grinning.

“I would never do anything to embarrass you, corpo.”