Page 31 of Human Reform
I settled into the chair opposite her, unwrapping my own meal.“Any progress?”
She took a bite, her eyes closing briefly in appreciation before she swallowed.“Maybe.I’ve been exploring possibilities to neutralize the corrupted sections.”She tapped the screen, bringing up a complex neural pattern.“See, I think we might need to preserve the original architecture of the code while eliminating the corruption.”
I frowned, setting my food down.“Why save any of it?The code is a weapon against us.We should purge it completely.”
“It’s not that simple,” she argued, leaning forward.“My original code wasn’t bad.It was brilliant, actually.It was just used for the wrong purpose.”Her fingers traced the intricate patterns on the screen.“If we can salvage the core architecture while removing the malicious elements?—”
“No.”The word came out harsher than I intended.“What you created may have been brilliant and unique, but it still needs to be destroyed so no one can ever enslave us again.”
Her cheeks flushed with color.“I’m just saying?—”
“I lived it, Alora.”I leaned forward, matching her intensity.“I was there when that code stripped away everything that made me an individual.When it turned me into a weapon.”My voice dropped lower.“I killed blindly because of that code.”
The air between us crackled with tension.Her eyes locked with mine, neither of us willing to look away first.
“I’m not saying we keep the kill switches or the override protocols,” she said finally, her voice softer.“But some of the elegant solutions in that framework could be repurposed.”Her fingers twisted the small bracelet on her wrist—a nervous habit I’d noticed before.“Destroying something brilliant feels wasteful when it could be redeemed.”
I understood then that she wasn’t just talking about the code.
“Some things can’t be redeemed,” I said quietly.“Only destroyed and rebuilt.”
She was silent for a long moment, her eyes searching mine.Finally, she nodded.“You’re right.”Her voice had a wistful quality.“If complete destruction is what it takes to ensure your freedom, that’s what we’ll do.”
I reached across the desk, my hand covering hers.“Our freedom,” I corrected her.“And our future.”
Something shifted in her expression—a vulnerability that made my chest tight.“Our future,” she repeated softly.
We stayed like that, connected, as the implications of those two simple words hung in the air between us.
A vision suddenly bloomed in my mind—Alora with a rounded belly, her gray eyes bright with joy as I held her in my arms.A small child with her dark hair and my blue eyes running through our home.A family.Our family.
The emotions that surged through me were so powerful that I felt moisture gathering in my eyes.I blinked rapidly, startled by this physical reaction to an imagined future.Three days.I’d known her for only three days, and already I was picturing a life with her—the kind of life I’d watched Aeon build with Olivia, the kind Rune and Talia were building now.
What if she didn’t want that?What if the connection I felt was one-sided?And worse—what if we couldn’t fix the corrupted code?What if I reverted back to the mindless weapon I once was, all memories of her and these feelings wiped away like footprints in sand?
Panic seized me.I pulled my hand away abruptly, clearing my throat.
“Tell me about your life before,” I said, desperate to change the subject.“Before CyberEvolution, before all of this.”
Alora’s eyes flickered with something—disappointment maybe?—before she leaned back in her chair.
“Not much to tell,” she said, turning that bracelet on her wrist.“I was a problem child, actually.”
I raised an eyebrow, finding it hard to imagine this brilliant woman as anything but exceptional.“A problem?”
“Oh yeah.”A small smile tugged at her lips.“I had a pretty serious juvenile record by sixteen.Nothing too wild—mostly destruction of property, light vandalism.I was angry at the world and didn’t know what to do with it.”
“What changed?”
Her smile faded.“My parents kicked me out on my eighteenth birthday.Said they’d done their duty and couldn’t handle my ‘reckless behavior’ anymore.”The pain in her voice was raw, even after all these years.
“They sound like assholes,” I said bluntly.
That startled a laugh out of her.“They were just… conventional people who couldn’t understand why their daughter kept blowing things up instead of applying to college.”
“You blew things up?”
“Figure of speech.Mostly.”She grinned.“I did set one dumpster on fire by accident.”
