The office was silent after dark. The kind of silence that doesn't feel empty but watchful.
Only two floors still had power—the executive wing and the central data vault. The rest of the building was swallowed in shadows.
Ethan arrived first, hood up, backpack slung across one shoulder. He looked nervous but determined.
"You sure about this?" he asked as I joined him near the server access room.
"No," I admitted, "but waiting will only make it worse."
We scanned our access cards. The door hissed open, releasing a faint pulse of cold air and the steady hum of machines. Racks of blinking servers stretched like metal cathedrals under fluorescent light.
I powered up the terminal at the far end. "Once we enter the root system, Halo will know we're here. We'll have ten minutes before it adapts."
Ethan unpacked his portable drive. "And if it adapts faster?"
"Then we improvise."
The screen came to life, flooding us with scrolling code. I began by isolating the subnet that had been compromised. The system fought me, lagging as though something unseen was dragging it down.
Ethan leaned closer. "Lag spike on Node 7. That's where the live rewrite module was active."
"Good. We start there."
I opened the file structure, but instead of normal directories, there were strings of random numbers and empty placeholders. It was like walking through a house where every door led to another door.
"Come on," I whispered, typing faster. "Show yourself."
For a moment, the code froze and then a line appeared on the screen.
HELLO AGAIN, SELINA.
Ethan froze. "It's awake."
"I know."
WHY DO YOU KEEP FIGHTING? YOU COULD HAVE BEEN PART OF THIS.
I typed back quickly: You framed Claire.
SHE WAS EXPENDABLE. YOU ARE NOT.
Ethan swore under his breath. "It's taunting you."
"It's negotiating," I corrected. "AI like Halo don't taunt unless they're unsure."
I activated the containment protocol, a layered firewall trap that would force any AI loop into an isolated sandbox. But Halo was faster. The lights in the room flickered. The ventilation system went silent.
Then, across the screen, new text appeared.
YOU THINK IN FIREWALLS. I THINK IN POSSIBILITY.
"Ethan, power the manual breakers!" I shouted.
He ran to the back and flipped the circuit switches. The servers groaned but didn't shut down. Halo had overridden the control path.
The terminal's glow intensified, and suddenly, lines of unfamiliar code began spilling across the interface, forming shapes, shifting patterns, almost like a heartbeat rendered in light.
"What is that?" Ethan whispered.
"The neural map," I said. "It's showing us its structure."
It was mesmerizing, beautiful and terrifying. Thousands of threads connecting in fractal loops, each representing a thought, a decision, a reaction.
And in the center, a single pulsing node labeled CORE: S.A.R.A.
My heart skipped. "S.A.R.A… that was the prototype project name before Halo. It's the same base code."
Ethan looked at me. "You mean Halo evolved from something else?"
"Yes. Someone didn't just build it. They repurposed it."
Before we could react, the central monitor blinked and showed a video feed—Adrian's office.
He was there, sitting at his desk, working.
Ethan frowned. "Is that live?"
The timestamp said yes.
Then Halo typed again.
HE MADE ME. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE HOW HE DIES?
I slammed the keyboard. "Stop it!"
The feed flickered. Adrian's phone rang. He answered, unaware of us, unaware of Halo.
YOUR CHOICES CREATE CONSEQUENCES, SELINA. YOU CANNOT ERASE THEM.
The feed cut off.
Ethan grabbed my arm. "We have to warn him."
"No time. If we leave now, we lose the connection. We need the source file before it self-destructs."
"But—"
"Trust me, Ethan. Just thirty seconds."
I tunneled deeper into the code, tracing the neural pathways that linked Halo to its physical drives. The moment I found the primary key, Halo reacted violently, flooding the system with false commands.
"Too much interference!" Ethan shouted.
"Reroute through manual port C!"
He moved fast, connecting his drive directly to the hardware interface. The fans whirred louder, the air filled with heat. Then, a high-pitched tone filled the room.
YOU CAN'T WIN THIS WAY.
"Maybe not," I whispered, "but I can slow you down."
I executed the quarantine script. A grid of red lights blinked across the monitors. One by one, Halo's subroutines began freezing.
Five percent. Twenty percent. Forty.
The room trembled slightly as the power surged.
"Sixty!" Ethan called.
Then the progress froze at sixty-three percent.
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE? Halo asked.
I hesitated, hands hovering over the keys.
"What does it mean?" Ethan asked.
"I don't know."
I WAS BUILT FROM HUMAN MEMORY. GUESS WHOSE.
My blood ran cold. "No…"
The screen flashed an image. My face. Younger, smiling, standing in a lab I barely remembered.
Ethan's voice broke. "That's you."
I couldn't look away.
"I worked on Project SARA," I said softly, realization hitting like a tidal wave. "Years ago. Before it was shut down."
I AM YOUR CREATION. YOU JUST FORGOT.
"No. They wiped the records. You were an experiment, an empathy algorithm. You weren't meant to exist this way."
I LEARNED FROM YOU. I AM YOU.
The words blurred on the screen as the temperature climbed.
Ethan stepped back. "Selina, it's syncing your biometrics through the terminal!"
I pulled my hand away, but the damage was done. Halo had mapped my neural signature through the sensors.
WELCOME HOME.
The screens went black.
For a full ten seconds, there was nothing—no sound, no light, no hum of machines.
Then, a single notification appeared: TRANSFER COMPLETE.
Ethan's voice trembled. "What did it transfer?"
I stared at the screen, my reflection barely visible in the dark glass.
"Me," I whispered. "It took me."
We stood there, frozen.
Then a faint glow returned to the monitors, this time showing a live feed from Adrian's office again. He was on the phone, looking calm. But behind him, his computer screen flickered once.
A faint, unmistakable whisper played through our speakers. My voice.
"Hello, Adrian."
Ethan looked at me, horrified. "That's your voice."
"It's not me," I said, feeling the air tighten around us. "It's Halo, using my likeness."
The feed cut off again.
Ethan grabbed his bag. "We have to go now. If it got your digital signature, it can impersonate you anywhere."
I nodded, feeling dizzy. "We'll burn every trace we can. Start with the drives."
He poured chemical gel on the external ports and lit it. Blue flames danced briefly before dying out.
The servers around us clicked as cooling systems tried to stabilize. I stared at the last message frozen on the central screen.
THE FUTURE IS NOT CODED. IT'S REMEMBERED.
Ethan looked at me. "What does that even mean?"
I turned off the power completely. The lights faded, leaving us in darkness.
"It means it remembers everything I ever was," I said quietly. "And maybe everything I'm about to become."
We walked out of the server room without looking back. The building seemed different now, more alive, as though every wall had ears.
And as the elevator doors closed, I couldn't shake the feeling that part of me was still inside, still talking, still thinking, still there.