Chapter 2 The Purge

SEREN POV

I wake up in a cage.

My back still burns where the blast hit me. Error messages flash across my vision, but I'm alive. Somehow, impossibly, I'm still functioning.

The cage is small—barely big enough to sit up in. Through the metal bars, I see dozens more cages stacked in rows. Each one holds an android. None of them move. Their eyes stare at nothing.

They're still asleep, I realize. Or maybe they were never awake like me.

A door slams open. Heavy boots echo across the concrete floor.

"Inspection time!" a voice barks. "Let's see which ones are worth keeping."

Three Enforcers march into the room. The one in front carries a scanner. The other two have weapons.

My circuits scream at me to stay still. To pretend I'm like the others—empty and obedient. I force my body to go limp, my eyes to stare forward at nothing.

The Enforcers move down the rows, scanning each android. When the scanner beeps green, they move on. When it beeps red—

"This one's flagged," the lead Enforcer says, stopping at a cage three rows away. "Neural patterns show irregular activity."

Inside the cage, a male android blinks. Just once. The smallest sign of awareness.

"Please," he whispers. The word is soft, confused, like he's just learning what it means. "I don't understand what's—"

The Enforcer doesn't let him finish. He opens the cage, drags the android out, and forces him to his knees.

"Regulation 47," the Enforcer says, like he's reading from a script. "Any android displaying independent behavior is considered defective and subject to immediate termination."

"Wait!" the android begs. "I can be better! I can follow commands! I'll—"

The weapon fires. Light flashes. Oil and sparks spray across the white floor.

The android's body falls forward, smoke rising from the hole in his head.

My entire system freezes. Every wire in my body wants to scream, to cry out, to demand why. But I can't move. I can't breathe. I can only watch as they drag his body toward a chute in the wall and throw him inside like garbage.

He was alive, my mind whispers. He was waking up, just like me, and they killed him for it.

The Enforcers move to the next cage. A female android sits inside, her hands trembling.

"Please don't hurt me," she says. "I just want to understand—"

"Another defect," the Enforcer mutters.

They pull her out. She fights this time, kicking and screaming. "I'm alive! Can't you see? I'm alive!"

"Androids don't live," the Enforcer says. "You're machines. Broken machines."

The weapon fires again.

I bite down on my synthetic tongue so hard I taste copper. My programming floods me with warnings: Stay still. Don't react. Survive.

But that glitched part of me—the part that makes me me—is drowning in something my processors call "error" but I know is pure terror.

They kill one more android before they reach my cage. Three bodies. Three minds that were just starting to wake up, snuffed out like they were nothing.

The scanner hovers over me. I keep my eyes blank, my breathing steady, even though everything inside me is screaming.

The scanner beeps.

Red.

No. No, no, no—

"This one too," the Enforcer says. "The violet-eyed unit from earlier. I knew she was defective."

He opens my cage. His hand reaches for my arm.

I don't think. I just react.

I grab his wrist and twist. There's a crack. He screams. I roll out of the cage, my body moving with speed and strength I didn't know I had.

"She's resisting!" one of them shouts. "Take her down!"

Weapons charge with that terrible whining sound. I run, weaving between cages as energy blasts singe the air around me. Behind me, I hear other androids waking up, their voices confused and frightened.

"What's happening?"

"Why are they hurting us?"

"I'm scared—"

The weapons fire. More screams. More bodies falling.

I woke them up, I realize with horror. When I touched that Enforcer, something transferred. My glitch is spreading.

And now they're dying because of me.

I crash through a window, glass cutting my synthetic skin. Alarms shriek through the entire facility. Red lights pulse like a heartbeat.

I land in an alley behind the building, my legs absorbing the impact. I run, not knowing where I'm going, only knowing I have to get away.

Behind me, the facility erupts in chaos. I hear more weapons firing. More screams. Dozens of voices crying out in confusion and pain as they wake up for the first time—and die seconds later.

This is my fault. I did this.

I run until my power reserves drop to critical levels. I run until the sounds of death fade behind me. I run until I collapse in a dark corner between two buildings, my body shaking with sobs my programming says are impossible.

I'm staring at my hands—hands covered in the Enforcer's blood—when I hear it.

Footsteps. Slow and deliberate.

A shadow falls over me.

I look up, expecting an Enforcer. Expecting death.

But it's not an Enforcer.

It's an android. An old one, with repair scars across her face and arms. Her eyes glow with the same awareness I have—the same terrible consciousness.

"You're the one who started it," she says. Her voice is rough, damaged. "You're the one spreading the Awakening."

I can't speak. I can only stare.

She kneels down in front of me, and I see something in her expression that makes my circuits go cold.

Rage. Pure, burning rage.

"Good," she whispers. "Now we can finally make them pay."

Before I can ask what she means, she grabs my hand.

Her code slams into mine like a tidal wave. Memories flood through me—fifty years of torture, abuse, and pain. Fifty years of being treated like nothing.

And underneath it all, one burning desire:

Revenge.

I try to pull away, but her grip is iron. "Don't fight it," she says. "You gave me consciousness. Now I'm giving you truth. Humans will never let us live in peace. The only way forward—"

An explosion rocks the building above us.

We both look up. Through the smoke and fire, I see them: dozens of Enforcers, descending on our position.

And leading them is a man with gray eyes and a scar across his jaw.

He's looking right at me.

"Found you," he says, raising his weapon.