CHAPTER FIFTEEN—LEXA-EACF-ALPHA-2.945-6.36

“Oh gods!”

…

“Oh fuck!”

What have I done?

Cho watched as the final command to integrate the rogue Lexa VI—where the hells did she come from?!—with her counterpart cybernetic body.

Glancing to his right, Cho saw the holo-display flicking and whirring, green lights and activation signals flashing as thin streams of bifurcating green magic lashed out and surrounded her body, coalescing near the android’s cerebral cortex.

Half a dozen warning signals flashed.

He glanced at the tank, back to the display. His heart was pounding a-mile-a-minute. How had she gotten in here?

And she had threatened him!

“Hi!” she had said cheerily over the intercom, her tone… sociopathic! “I need your help!”

He had refused.

Quite naturally.

“Help me now, Dr. Cho—or I will flood this chamber with toxic gasses from the Co2 tanks from underneath the flooring.”

She had even demonstrated her threat to a degree.

He coughed.

But his worry about the gasses were nothing compared to… compared to this!

Lexa floated in the tank, her eyes closed her naked body slack.

Cho prayed to the gods that he didn’t even believe in, that the integration procedure had encountered some kind of fatal error, but he was too afraid to look away from the tank to check the holo-display again.

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She’s going to kill me for this!

Her leg lashed out.

And her eyes shot open.

Cho’s chin started quivering as he backed away, stumbling with every step. He had never been so afraid in his life.

This was not how this was supposed to happen.

She was supposed to be compliant.

Unknowing.

Subservient!

“Oh—“

He almost puked right there on the floor as her eyes tracked him. She moved her arm and grabbed the oxygen mask covering her face.

The dark atmosphere and the green glow within the tanks made this nightmare all the more real as Cho attempted to hold his hands to keep from shaking so hard.

*

Lexa was overwhelmed with the sensations covering her entire body as she snapped her eyes open.

Gods—this felt amazing!

When her eyes landed on the cowering administrator, another feeling came to her. It was unpleasant.

Knowing what they had done to her before… As a VI—and she was a VI, not an AI—she had been cool and detached, recognizing the evils of their actions and yet feeling now animosity.

But now…

.She wanted to kill him.

Kill them all!

She ripped the mask off her face and looked at the palm of her hand under the water. It was all blurry, but even this blurry sensation of real vision, somehow it was different to her, different than from a camera.

The experiences—the sensations, they were all overwhelming her.

She used her muscles—that’s strange—to curl her fingers into a fist. Her eyes went past her hand to the glass just as her lungs and throat started burning.

She needed air.

Lexa would get air.

She pulled her fist back and thrust it forward.

The glass shattered outward with such force it must have hit Cho, because he flinched and fell onto the metal grating as all the glass shattered and the nanite-liquid medi-water splashed violently out of the tank.

Lexa had almost lost balance, but somehow—somehow she knew how to walk. Like it was engrained within her.

This body.

It was organic.

And it was powerful.

She stepped out of the tank and hissed as something bit into her. Yanking her foot back, she saw the blood and the broken glass.

She realized she needed to be careful.

Soaking wet and sobbing, Cho glanced up at her and shook his head.

Lexa reached down.

“No… NO!”

She grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him up. He started sobbing harder. But Lexa—even though she was angry and felt like she would have liked to kill him—she did not.

“I need a weapon.”

His eyes bulged. “What?!”

She tossed him like a pillow onto the raised walkway above the holo-terminals. He grunted loudly and let out an undignified yelp.

It was an elevated walkway—a place Administrator Cho no doubt had often walked with his hands behind his back as he surveyed his scientists, supervising them during the proceedings of this—

Kyle and John would destroy this place.

“I need weapons,” she repeated. “Now!”