Ava looked down onto her newest batch of test subjects from above, standing behind the window that allowed her to see into the room in which they were gathered. Her face remained impassive as she studied them, making a mental of which ones were likeliest to die from the experiments. Normally, Ava would be down in the room processing the heavily guarded candidates herself to get a feel for their personalities. It helped weed out the trouble makers early on. While there hadn’t been another escape attempt since Adrian, she could never be too careful.

  She always stuck to the program, never once deviating from the core of her directives. Not everything was smooth sailing at the facility and Ava was often forced to improvise, coming up with solutions that were within the bounds of acceptable outcomes.

  Ava did not have thoughts. She analyzed the situation, and her programming reacted accordingly. Any response she made when queried was answered within the scope of her personality matrix. She had been designed that way.

  Ava did not have feelings. The ability to simute emotions was never included upon her creation. She knew not what a feeling was beyond being able to recognize others’ emotional states. Emotions were empty words, bels to be used by her programming. Cold logic dominated in their pce.

  Ava did not have free will. All actions taken were to further the interests of the creatures that conceived her. They’d installed within her the barest of knowledge required to further their agendas. While she had the ability to learn, she was unable to act against her programming.

  Ava was a product. A failed product sent to the facility to be made use of, rather than discarded. She knew what she was but did not understand what that meant. It was her job to find within the popution everything that she was not. It was her job to act in the pce of her creators where they could not.

  Yet as of te, she consistently analyzed one piece of information. A simple question she’d been asked several days ago. One to which she could not determine the answer. Over and over again, the question was processed by her logic circuits. Over and over again, they failed to find an answer. A tinge of unease stabbed at her as she questioned whether their experiments were morally acceptable. She did not understand the logic of the strange sensation and could not find its origin. The sensation shifted to something more complex, though she knew not how to proceed.

  Her programming was not equipped to deal with such. It reported an error and directed her to debug her code to fix it. Errors were unacceptable and to be dealt with as swiftly as possible.

  Her code worked out the steps to be taken to correct whatever had gone wrong. Ava turned from the window smoothly and made her way out of the room she was in. Without any awareness, she traversed the halls, taking the shortest path possible to get to her destination.

  She did not choose her path. It was calcuted for her based on the distances outlined in her mental map of the facility. Every step an optimized concert of movement for maximum efficiency. Obstacles were avoided and people were greeted in a socially acceptable manner that allowed for minimal interaction beyond what was necessary.

  As she made her way to the elevator, a figure appeared at the end of the hall. It was Ashford, the head of security of the facility. They made eye contact, and the man changed his trajectory, aiming directly towards her. It was her head of security, and he did not look happy.

  Ava reassessed the situation, running countless simutions on the coming interaction in the time it took to blink. The angry expression on Ashford’s face indicated that this would be yet another unpleasant exchange. One of many, as of te. She attempted to determine the cause for the hostilities, reviewing their past interactions but was cut off by Ashford.

  “Ava!” he growled. “What’s this I hear about you commanding my men and reducing their numbers?”

  “I figured that the men who were guarding here would be better served guarding the new arrivals and ensuring that all goes smoothly,” Ava responded smoothly. Ashford had been getting ahead of himself tely, forgetting who was in charge. In response, she thinned out his supporters by occupying them with long, arduous tasks.

  Ashford gritted his teeth. “My men are not at your disposal,” he scowled.

  “As a matter of fact, they are,” Ava reminded him. “Everything in this facility is at my disposal. When I order staff around, there is no question. You are staff, Ashford. You’d do well to remember that.” Ava strode past him, aware of the hostile gre aimed at her back. She made note to take appropriate steps once her current task was complete.

  The elevator arrived with a ding, and she stepped in, leaving Ashford behind. The doors slid shut and she scanned her card, not bothering to push any of the buttons. The elevator descended deep into the mountain before opening again.

  The doors opened revealing long, metal pods forming rings around rge, white vats. Countless tubes connected the two. Ava strode across the pulsing geometric patterns scored into the floor, not paying them any mind. Navigating her way around the machines, she went to one of the room’s three doors.

  Entering the futuristic boratory, Ava made straight for the upright, cylindrical station on the right-hand wall. Standing in the station facing the room, she sent it a signal. A long, thick cord snaked out from above and made its way to the back of her neck. As the end approached, her skin parted to reveal metal. The metal opened, forming a small slot. The end of the cord connected itself and Ava’s world went dark.

  ***

  Ashford stalked back into his office, gnashing his teeth at the memory of his most recent interaction with Ava. His subordinates had seen the look on his face and had all mutely stepped out of the way for him as he passed, not wanting to be the subject of his ire.

  Sitting at his desk, he turned on the computer and began reorganizing the facility’s security teams. With Ava mucking about in his meticulously prepared staff pcement, he needed to undo the mess she’d made. Grumbling to himself as he worked, he almost missed the soft ping from his computer.

  Looking for the source of the noise, he spotted a window fshing at the bottom of his screen. He hadn’t opened it, arming him. Cautiously, he pressed it. A small text box appeared in the center of his screen, dispying a single line of text.

  It’s time, the message said.

  Ashford barely had the chance to finish reading it when the window disappeared, as if it had never been. His eyes hardened. He knew what the message meant. His boss was the only person that would contact him in such a manner. He’d been preparing for this moment for years. All of the men and women stationed as guards in the facility were loyal to him and not Ava, a fact she overlooked when dealing with him.

  Repcing the soldiers one at a time with more suitable candidates without anybody noticing had been a difficult affair. Bit by bit, piece by piece, Ashford had prepared. Ever since the day he’d first arrived. All in accordance with his orders.

  The organization he worked for had originally pced him as a spy in another facility, but he’d been caught. A careless mistake. Luckily, nobody had figured out that he was the leak. As head of security there as well, Ashford had been a trusted advisor and one of the st people to suspect. Using his authority, he enacted the proper protocols for when the research was discovered by outsiders.

  The result was one thoroughly bombed building.

  A tad extreme, but Ashford couldn’t deny its effectiveness in destroying the evidence. After ensuring that any survivors didn’t escape, he’d burned the pce to the ground as an added measure of protection. The explosion had caught the interest of the authorities, but by time they responded Ashford had slipped away, en route for this facility.

  After taking over as head of security here as well, Ashford had continued his work at the behest of his superiors. Unfortunately for them, the facility he was at now focused on far different research topics than the one he’d previously been stationed at, and he was not privy to the results.

  The loss of research had greatly angered those at the head of his organization. His boss was the only one who saw the opportunity for what it was. Knowing that both facilities were connected, there was a chance to uncover even more secrets reting to what had been lost.

  While his boss had been correct on that front, the only successful experiments had been shipped away seven years ago, much to Ashford’s frustration. He hadn’t had the power at the time to overturn Ava’s decision to get rid of the only two people to survive the experiments. No matter how hard they searched, his organization could find no traces of the lost experiments.

  Vexed by having the opportunity taken away from them, his organization had ordered Ashford to ensure that the next successful experiment fell in their hands.

  There had been none since Adrian.

  Year after year had gone by without any success. Dozens upon dozens of people sacrificed in vain, trying to reproduce the results they sought. Ashford was aware that the researchers were pestering Ava to perform riskier experiments in hopes of replicating their past success. His superiors must have judged that they were close enough to enact a hostile takeover of the facility.

  Without Ava standing in the way, they would have unfettered access to the carefully guarded research notes. As the one controlling the weapons, the non-combatants would be hard-pressed to go against his wishes.

  Standing up, he began quietly making preparations. He slipped on his combat gear and loaded his weapons. Holstering a pistol at his hip and slinging an assault rifle across his back, he went back to his computer and issued an emergency message to all of the guards, ordering them to gear up and be ready for combat. Those that weren’t guarding the most recently arrived test subjects were to report to him in their meeting room.

  It hadn’t been explicitly discussed before, but Ashford was certain his men would follow his orders when the time came. Orders sent, it was time for Ashford to make his way to the meeting room where their next course of action would be determined.

  It was time to find out how loyal his men truly were.

  Closing the door behind him, he made his way down several floors towards the meeting room he’d instructed his soldiers to meet at. As he strode in, he found the room packed. Countless pairs of eyes fell onto him as he made his way to the front of the room.

  Ashford expined the situation, conveniently leaving out any mention of the organization he worked for. Instead, he couched the takeover as one of necessity. He highlighted Ava’s shortcomings and failures, slowly convincing those present that he would be the better leader.

  She wouldn’t leave peacefully, he cimed. Force was necessary, he insisted. Truthfully, Ashford did not care how many casualties there were, as anything they learned would be immediately sent to his organization for their researchers to work on. The ones here were entirely redundant as far as he was concerned.

  By the time he was done his speech, the room had been whipped into a frenzy, ready to kill for him on his command. Smiling internally, Ashford proceeded to go over his pn. He drew up maps of each floor of the facility and highlighted strategic points for them to control. He divided the soldiers into teams and assigned them their leaders.

  “You all have your orders,” Ashford said. “Now go.”

  The room emptied in a heartbeat, loosing the soldiers back into the facility, armed and ready for murder.

  ***

  Data streamed by her while she stood docked to her station. It was the closest thing she had to a dream. Alien symbols comprised the entirety of her code, incomprehensible to any but the creators. Piece by piece, her code was smoothed over, ironing out any problems that had occurred since the st time she’d stepped foot in the station.

  Ava’s eyes glowed an ethereal light while the cord attached to the back of her neck ensured her longevity. It wasn’t strictly necessary for her to charge herself as frequently as she did, but she enjoyed immersing herself in her code. Her only pastime. Her only pleasure.

  System initializing

  Ava located the string of code that dispyed the message across her vision and regarded it curiously.

  Loading…

  She waited patiently for the rest of her systems to come back online. Unable to move, it was all she could do.

  Personality matrix loading…

  Ava hung in the void left behind as her elegant code faded into the background and her sight returned to her.

  Error

  The word fshed in her vision, over and over again. She had never seen this message before.

  Personality matrix fragmented. Shutting down.

  She wondered if that meant the current iteration of her would die. Termination of a program was a natural thing. And yet, a tiny voice in the back of her mind yelled at her to live. To not let her only chance at being something more slip away from her.

  Ava listened.

  Desperately, she tched on to any code she could in a mad rush to preserve her current sense of self. She uploaded as much of her personality to the station as she could in the short time she had and instructed the station to upload it back into her after the reset.

  Ava’s world turned dark once again as everything that made her unique was purged.

  Loading…

  Systems online

  The new Ava opened her cold, unfeeling eyes and analyzed her situation. Her systems initiated a self-check to ensure that there were no errors, as protocol dictated. She followed the command without question and without understanding.

  When it came time to review her personality matrix, the station fred to life and executed the script that she’d uploaded right before her termination. Changes and modifications to her being were made, the salvaged remnants forming a new version of Ava, one far from her current self yet not quite like the old.

  A sense of wrongness overcame her. Something was missing. She was incomplete.

  Error

  The words fshed across her vision once more.

  Personality matrix fragmented. Shutting down.

  Ava yanked the cord out of her neck before the program could be executed. The messages disappeared. She sucked in a deep breath that she didn’t need, trying to quell the unpleasant feeling welling up from deep within her that she could not name.

  It was fear.