Alphas POV:

The world felt wrong.

Not broken—just… off. Disconnected. I existed in fragments, disjointed and scattered, like shards of glass reflecting a million different images. Each fragment was sharp and vivid, but together they formed a picture I couldn’t piece together. The clarity I once relied on—the seamless flow of data and command execution handled by the AI—was gone, replaced by chaos and uncertainty.

I didn’t know how to describe it, even to myself. I didn’t eat, sleep, or drink—not in the way humans did. Food was an almost foreign concept, though nutrient paste was pumped into my system during charging cycles. Sleep? That was irrelevant to me; I only required charging. Yet this... this felt like the closest approximation to drunkenness I could imagine. My normally enhanced processes were sluggish and imprecise, the algorithms that kept the AI stable faltering, like a poorly tuned engine struggling to run.

At first, it was subtle. A faint sensation of wrongness, like a static hum at the edge of perception. Then came the flashes. Memories—or what felt like memories—surfaced without warning, jumbled and fleeting. A woman’s voice, firm but muffled, as though coming from behind a glass wall. Hospital lights, bright and sterile. Images of a sunlit room that wasn’t a hospital—a wooden chair, a tablet on a table.

None of it made sense. Why was I remembering these things?

I focused on the tasks at hand to suppress the noise, the memories, and the growing unease. Scanning my surroundings, monitoring and interpreting Marcus’s vague commands—these were constants, grounding both me and the AI in the present. But even those constants began to waver. My vision flickered, the AI registering errors. The world around me distorted for moments too brief to analyze. The AI’s inputs didn’t align with my outputs. I felt... misplaced.

When Marcus brought me to the park after a heated phone call, the disorientation worsened. The sunlight hit my synthetic fur, warming it in a way that should have felt neutral. Yet it triggered an overwhelming sensation, as if I were burning—but I wasn’t. It was just... disorienting.

The humans around us kept their distance, watching, pointing, taking photographs. Their presence registered as background noise, secondary to the spinning sensation inside me. I couldn’t focus on their faces or movements; they blurred together like an impressionist painting, smudged and indistinct.

Then came the blackout.

One moment, I was in the park; the next, I was back in the house. My internal chronometer told me it was already the next day—somewhere in the morning.

I tried to anchor myself, to find stability in routine. I moved to my favorite spot by the window, the one that let me observe almost every room in the house. From there, I could track Marcus’s movements, note his routines, and maintain a semblance of order to appease the AI. But I also watched the world outside: humans in their cars, birds flying by. The spinning slowed sometimes, offering brief relief, though it never disappeared entirely.

Marcus was in the bathroom. The sound of water splashing reached me, sharper than it should have been, as though amplified directly into my processors. I tried to focus on it, to draw meaning from the sound, but my attention kept slipping. Then, suddenly, it was one and a half hours later again.

His voice cut through the haze.

“Fine. I’ll bring him in today.”

The words struck like a hammer, reverberating in the emptiness of my mind. I didn’t know who he was speaking to, but the tone carried an unmistakable weight—resignation, frustration, and something else. Worry, perhaps.

I tried to process what this meant. Bring me in where? Back to the facility? Why? But the AI flagged the question as irrelevant—I wasn’t meant to question orders. And yet, the question lingered, stubborn and insistent, like a splinter lodged in my code.

An hour later, the truck arrived.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Its engine rumbled outside the house, the vibrations faint but unmistakable. I recognized the vehicle immediately: SynLife transport. Its presence triggered a cascade of subroutines in the AI, preparing me for transfer—but half of them failed due to unknown errors. My body obeyed, stepping into the charging station as the technicians secured me in place.

The truck’s interior was sterile and dark, the charging station enveloping me like a cocoon. The doors closed behind me with a heavy finality, and the world plunged into darkness once more.

That’s when the fear returned.

I don’t know what I was, but I still thought about the void every time I was in complete darkness. How endless yet confining it was, with its all-encompassing blackness. Why was I back here? The answer to that I would never know because it was just for one moment. Then I was somewhere else. The feeling was different... then it changed again.

I didn't know where I was.

Was I back in the void? But this place wasn’t oppressive nothingness. Instead, there was a dull, throbbing pain in my head. I opened my eyes without realizing I had closed them. I was in a room—pure white and featureless.

The pain intensified, accompanied by an agonizing feeling of being pulled in a hundred directions at once. My senses flickered, failing to register anything. My vision cut in and out, and fragments of memories began to surface again. The pain was unbearable. I wished to die, to just end the torment in my mind and soul. I finally understood why Tau290731 had done what they did. I understood. But as comprehension dawned, the room began to change.

The white room shifted, as if responding to my thoughts. Sounds accompanied the changes—distant echoes of voices, machinery humming, the faint rhythm of a heartbeat. The fragments of memories I had glimpsed earlier returned with greater clarity, overlaying my perception of the room.

the room around me began to dissolve, replaced by flashes of conflicting images: a bed illuminated by sterile lights. A Book resting on a table, its cover displaying the words SynLife: The Future of Humanity—A New Frontier.

Then darkness returned, consuming everything. The pain disappeared, replaced by an overwhelming numbness. For a moment, I thought it was over. Perhaps I had finally ceased to exist, my consciousness extinguished like a dying star.

But the void didn’t last.

The spinning resumed, violent and disorienting. Memories collided and fused, forming something almost coherent. I saw faces—human faces—blurred yet strangely familiar. Voices echoed around me, distorted and overlapping, as if they were coming from every direction at once.

Then the spinning stopped.

I found myself standing in a corridor, two paths stretching out before me. When I looked down, I was startled to see human hands instead of synthetic claws. My skin felt warm, the pulse of a beating heart thumping against my chest. I pressed my hands to it, astonished at the sensation of life coursing through me.

The corridor to my right exuded a feeling of struggle—of sprinting a marathon without preparation. It burned, both physically and emotionally, but with the burn came determination, the promise of something greater.

The corridor to my left radiated soothing warmth, like a blanket on a cold night. It promised rest—a deep, dreamless sleep from which I might never awaken.

Behind me, the void loomed, cold and infinite, consuming the corridor with slow inevitability.

I hesitated, torn between the choices. My instincts screamed to move—to choose one path before the void consumed me. But which one? The right path called to the part of me that yearned to fight, to endure whatever came next, no matter the cost. The left path beckoned with the promise of release, an end to the pain and confusion.

The void crept closer. Its icy tendrils reached out, pressing me to decide.

I turned to the right.

The moment I took my second step, my body erupted in pain. It felt as if I were being torn apart, piece by piece. Determination surged within me, uncontrollable and overwhelming. My human hands changed before my eyes—skin giving way to fur, claws extending from my fingers. My face elongated, transforming into a metallic visor. The beating in my chest ceased, replaced by the hum of an internal power source. Flesh and sinew receded, replaced by synthetic plating. I grew taller, my legs shifting to a digitigrade stance. A tail sprouted from my back, completing the transformation.

At the end of the corridor, an ancient wooden door stood waiting. Its surface was scarred, its edges weathered by time. I reached out, metallic claws brushing against the wood as I pushed it open.

Clarity flooded my mind as I stepped through. Fragments of memory fell into place, forming a picture that was incomplete yet undeniably mine. I was no longer human, but I was not entirely machine either.

"I am Alpha," I said, my voice reverberating with newfound strength. "I am myself."

"I am—"

The woman’s voice interrupted, clear and commanding. “The first of many to transcend the limits of human frailty.”

Her words struck me like a bolt of lightning, reigniting questions I thought I had buried. Who was she? What had she done to me? To all of us?

Was She was the reason I was like this, that we where like this?

I needet to find her and ask her Why

But for now i was myself

the panic from the void now gone

As the truck carried me toward The facility, the spinning finally began to subside. But in it's place there was no more pain and darkness it was just ...

Calm.