explaining as the earliest rays of light pierced through the curtains. I yawned. Only when I tried to pull the blankets towards me did I remember that I was sleeping on the couch.

I got up groggily to make myself a cup of coffee. Passing by the numerous books on languages and science on the shelf, I was once again reminded of what a genius I was living with.

I boiled some water in the kettle and went to clean up around where I was sleeping. I turned on the television, checking to see if Serah's research had made it onto the news.

The time was 06:45, so I tuned in to the morning news. After a few minutes of waiting, the news reporter spent a few minutes explaining what it could potentially do and the controversy associated with it. She then broadcast the interview that Serah was talking about.

Few questions were actually technological and informative. Most were laced with a skeptic's worry and the ethicality of the project.

After the small extract that they took from the interview had ended, the news reporter closed off with the question that was on everyone's mind, skeptics and enthusiasts alike.

"The question on everyone's mind is, what does the future hold for humanity?"

I got up to make my coffee after the broadcast ended.

I also grabbed a mug for Serah and poured some for her as well, but added milk to her cup. She was usually awake by this time.

She preferred to eat after exercising, which baffled me, but coffee wasn't eating, right?

So I made my way to our bedroom with her coffee in hand.

"Morning," I said, closing the door behind me.

"Hey Jack," she said. It wasn't too long since she had woken up, considering the bed was still undone.

"We'll, how's my star?" I asked, placing the coffee near the bedside.

"I'm no star yet, dear." She said, smiling.

"The news thinks otherwise."

"I'm on the news?" She asked.

"Probably the biggest thing on there. No pressure, of course," I joked.

She smiled. She was halfway through her coffee when her cell rang.

"Sebastian?" She asked, answering the call.

"Madam, you might want to come here," I heard the voice say over the phone. "The prototype has begun acting strangely," Sebastian said.

Serah didn't look too worried.

"I'll be there in half an hour," she said.

She ended the call and sighed.

"You go freshen up, I'll tidy up in here," I told her.

"Great," she said as she finished her coffee. She then went to the bathroom and left me to tidy the room.

After about 20 minutes, Serah exited the bathroom. She changed into a violet dress, along with some small heels.

"Coming with?" She asked.

I nodded no and gave her my keys.

A few minutes later I was waving goodbye to her. In the meantime, I had some shopping to do. She had a meeting with E-Pro later, so she'd be busy for more than a few hours.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

I also freshened up in the meantime. Payday was in 4 days, after all, I needed to see which ring I'd buy. An hour after Serah left, I also made my exi--

***

"How long are you planning to drag this story out?" Asked Emma as we got closer to our destination.

We were walking extremely slowly, so even I was surprised when I saw how close we were getting.

"It's barely sunset," I said, "Do you have anything to pass the time?" I asked incredulously.

"Maybe discuss a few details about our plan?"

Didn't we discuss what we needed to do already?

"Fine. Anyways, in the next few months, the AI, alongside E-Pro, became increasingly popular. Since it became easy to produce labour, businesses thrived. The average person received a generous monthly sum from the government. Life was good."

"Then what happened?" Felix asked as we hid close to the border and waited for nightfall.

"No idea. It was like a flip had been switched. A year after the success of Serah's project, the machined became what they are now. By then, they'd spread all over the world and had very important jobs. Governments had little time to muster defenses. Conventional weaponry was also mostly useless. In three days, barely any humans could be seen or found on the streets." I said.

"So what you're saying is, we have no idea what's going on?" Emma said.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Then what are we looking for exactly?"

"Serah, she'd know. And good food, I want to eat something nice for a change," I said.

The others nodded and watched as the sun disappeared over the horizon. Then, after discussing the plan again. We prepared to enter Utopia.

"We're going to crouch and make sure that we're not seen. If need be, we'll find a tree for cover and gather there. Preferably, we all come out at the same location." Emma clarified.

"Don't snakes live in high grass?" I asked.

They shrugged me off prepared.

It was a 50-metre run from the edge of the building, which we were hiding in, to the beginning of the grasslands.

The wind blew gently in our direction. Far ahead, we could see a few machines flying over, keeping watch on the borders.

As soon as they turned over, we all ran to the grass. The original plan was to immediately crouch down into the grass, but as I ran closer, I noticed a horizontal beam placed just outside the grass, slightly above my ankle.

"Shit," I jumped to avoid it and crashed into the ground. Felix tripped, which actually sent him over the laser and face down next to me. Emma was...where was Emma?

"Behind you," she said

Good, we had all made it. I then checked to see if the machines had seen me jump. Luckily, their gazes were still not on us.

I continued to crouch forward, making sure to stop moving whenever it seemed like the machines gazed in our direction.

I was ahead of the group until we reached the first tree about 20 steps from the beginning of the grassland. I waited for the other two to catch up before I continued.

We stayed silent, cautionary of any noise. After crouching halfway, my arms and legs were pretty sore, and so were the others. We decided to stop for a while and grouped.

A tingling sensation ran over my arm as a bunch of ants passed over my forearm. I flicked them off and continued forward.

Perhaps due to carelessness or the inability to see clearly past the high grass, we lost track of the machines.

"Is that heading towards us?" Felix asked.

Both Emma and I turned our heads in the direction Felix was looking to. One of the machines was flying straight towards us.

"Shit," I murmured.

"Go forward, I know what to do," said Emma.

Huh?

"Just go," she said and turned back.

Felix and I quickly crawled over to the nearest tree and hid behind. Emma disappeared into the high grass.

As soon as the machine passed by, Felix and I turned to the other side of the tree, where the machine had come from, and crouched for cover.

From what I could see, the machine was searching around where we were. It spotted something further behind and flew off to it.

We crouched forward with little issue until we were about halfway to the end. No sign of Emma had been seen, and Felix was getting worried.

We looked behind, but we couldn't see anything past the high grass. As we got nearer to the end, the number of trees increased, providing slightly better cover.

There hadn't been any incident since the first machine had gone to where we were.

"What's wrong?" I asked when Felix stopped abruptly.

"... Never mind, I thought I heard something."

We crawled for the next few minutes, making sure to keep cover. Soon we reached the end.

Utopia was surrounded by city walls. At the entrance, two machines were guarding it.

Felix and I pondered as we kept hidden. We couldn't jump over the wall or break it down. I sighed as I realised there was no other option but to go through the entrance.

"Is there no other entrance?" Felix asked me quietly.

"Too far, it's on the other side. And I don't know whether it's blocked off."

As we thought about how to enter, five machines suddenly flew out into the distance behind us. They were going right to the place we left Emma.

"What's that about?" Felix asked worriedly.

"We've got our own issues to worry about. We can't stay here, they'll find us in an hour max," I said.

Felix turned to look back worriedly.

"Yeah..."

As I turned back, I noticed that one of the machines had left, leaving one at the gates.

We stood in silence for a few minutes. After a moment, I felt a hand tap on my leg.

"Stuck?" Emma asked.

Felix widened his eyes in surprise but still managed to keep silent.

"Do you have a plan?" I asked.

She held out two metal shards in her hand, extending them towards me. I recognised the shards as part of the machine bodies.

"You killed one?" I asked.

"They'll fix it up in an hour, we gotta hurry before the other machines return too," she said.

She handed the shards to me, then I handed them to Felix.

"Why me?!" He exclaimed quietly.

"You said you never miss."

I didn't have the confidence nor the aim to throw accurately, and Emma had given them to me for what I presume was the same reason

Felix begrudgingly took the shards, not wanting to waste more time.

He aimed for a few seconds then threw both shards in quick succession. The first flew straight past the machine and I felt my heart drop.

As it hit the wall behind it, the machine turned back to see what flew past him, exposing the weak point.

The second shard was about to miss when I shouted.

"Here, dumbass!" I said.

The machine's head snapped in my direction, directly in the shard's way.

A second after the machine saw me, the shard impacted straight into its weak spot, and the machine dropped dead.

"Quick, the rest will be here soon," I said.

Felix was still a bit stunned, but he quickly recovered and ran inside with Emma behind me.

The scenery changed completely. The city was clean and mesmerizing. Metallic surfaces on buildings and vehicles reflected the sunlight beautifully.

Of course, we were hidden. Right behind the gates was a small hill which marked the beginning of the city.

As we hid, we saw little more than 1 or 2 humans walking around, seemingly aimlessly. Still, it was a lot more than we expected, considering you couldn't even find people outside.

Lush greenery and tall trees stood everywhere but didn't grow to abnormal degrees.

It was the typical Utopia you'd imagine, albeit very metallic.

"So...we're trapped inside now?" Felix said, looking at the gates which now had 5 machines around it.

"Yep," I said.

I looked towards the city, planning how we were going to navigate through. There were far less machines on the streets than I expected.

"That's our destination," I said, pointing to the tallest tower in the distance.

Now all I needed to do was to figure out how to move.