I slept like the dead, and awoke the same way. God knew what that pill did to my body, but all I remember was passing out the moment it crawled down my throat. Calling it ‘gross’ was a horrid understatement.

A beam of light pelted my closed eyelids. No matter how hard I tried to, I couldn’t stop the morning from leaking in. I’d tried everything: Put up countless blankets and curtains, draping down from the top of the roof, stuffing stained satin pillows on the tiny windowsill, covering the glass – but nothing worked. A little light always found itself poking through. God damn the sun.

“Get up.”

I scrambled to a sit, panicked, covering my figure with a blanket. My eyes swept across the room, my head whipping from corner to corner, heart beating three-thousand times a minute. Who the hell was that? Was I hearing things? Did I finally lose my mind?

I heard a laugh from above, jeering and haughty. A… girl’s voice? “This place is disgusting! You live here?”

Who– What– I couldn’t even form a sentence. My bottom lip quivered, cycling through every variation of “Wh–” before eventually dribbling out incomprehensible garbage.

The voice sighed. There was the tiniest crack in it, like an audio glitch from a computer. Barely noticeable. “Y’know, if you’re not gonna say anything, it’s just gonna make things much harder than it needs to be.” From behind! I whirled my head around, but only saw the tatami floor. Then, as I slowly turned back ahead, it came into view. She came into view, floating towards the ground from the ceiling, upside down. “Hey.”

The first thing I noticed about her was the steel. Fibers and cables of metal spiraled up and around where her neck should've been, stopping just below the ear. There were so many moving parts embedded in it: Things that spun, whirred, and gave off light in soft pulses. Together, they formed a structure that looked like a human neck. A circular piece at the front sank flush in the middle, with wires extending out up to her head and down to her shoulders. Her hair was a light burgundy color, spilling from a side-ponytail to her shoulders, her eyes piercing and narrow. Two great lines, sleek and sharp, ran from her chin to her temple, creating borders between her cheeks and the rest of her face. When I looked closely, I saw more bits of machinery hidden under the skin. As she maneuvered in the air, turning right-side up, I was surprised that the rest of her looked stunningly human. Had she appeared on the street, I’d have assumed her an underground idol. But she wasn’t in the street. She was in my home. She was an invader.

Her face scrunched in discomfort. I could hear the tiniest mechanical clicks coming from her. “Can you stop staring like that? It’s rude.”

I scampered away. I probably looked like a roach, wrapped beneath a padded blanket and tin cans.

“Nevermind. I should’ve expected less from a hikki like you.” A silver jacket materialized out of nowhere, wrapping itself around her body. She patted it down as if the room’s filth got on her clothes. “I should introduce myself. EMPHAI-Proto, ID-0000011. I’m the experimental treatment you consented to.”

“GET THE FUCK OUT!” I roared. Viscous globs of saliva flew from my mouth as I trembled at the loudness of my own voice. I was furious. No, I was… scared. No – I was both? But that didn’t matter. I could feel my eyes stretched open, watery at the corners, as if held apart by a clamp. “LEAVE!”

ID-0000011 looked at me incredulously. She blinked once, then twice, then narrowed her eyebrows in contempt. “That’s not going to work on me. Not like it did for…” She closed her eyes. That central piece in her neck glowed vibrantly blue for a moment. “Ouch. Not just Mom and Dad, but your older brother too? You’re a real piece of work.”

Her words were like daggers, and with each one, I felt a stab through my body. But I shouldn’t. All they did was demean me, argue with me, yell at me. To hell with them! No, they probably would’ve found their way there anyway. And yet…

“Keep them out of your mouth! They were scum! Looking down on me, at the same time acting like they cared. All the way ‘til the end!”

“Talk about the pot calling the kettle black,” She groaned. “I don’t really care. I’m looking through your memories – all they did was try and help. A bit more than what you deserve, isn’t it?”

The floodgates broke loose. She was in my head?! Not even my thoughts were safe! Clenching my teeth, I snatched an empty beer bottle from the floor and threw it with all the force of an NPB pitcher. But to my shock, it just phased right through her. As if she didn’t exist. I didn’t even pay it any mind as it shattered against the opposite wall, shards spilling over my keyboard. It made me forget about my anger, if only momentarily.

“I can see why they sent you away.” She said, her complexion a mask of scorn. “I would too if your second response to conversation is… that.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“What…” I was still slack-jawed, the words barely dribbling out. “Are you?”

“I already told you. EMPHAI-Proto, ID-0000011. The experimental treatment you signed up for.” She crossed her arms. “Someone should’ve come by a couple days ago for a debriefing. To tell you what’s going on.”

The guy from yesterday. Frankly, I wasn’t paying attention to what he said. He probably did mention something about the effects, but at the time, I just wanted him gone. “No one did.” I said.

Another blue glow flashed from her neck. ID-0000011 scowled, and I felt a pang of shame rattle my body. “I might as well start from ground zero. That pill you swallowed? That was me. There’s no easy way to say this, but: that was a robot that induces a sort of programmed schizophrenia in your brain so we can communicate. It also grants me access to your memories, but not your feelings. Therefore,” She said, reclining in midair, as if lounging on a couch. “For this treatment to work, you’re going to need to start being honest.”

“You gave me SCHIZOPHRENIA?!”

“This is why you should’ve listened to the other guy. I’m not programmed for euphemisms.”

I stared at her for a moment in utter shock. When I looked away, I wrapped myself more in my sheets, instinctively putting my hands to my head like I had a migraine. At any moment, I feared that the pill – no, that thing – would just burst out of my cranium like from that one movie Alien. Or even worse: that it’d never leave.

“Get out of my head.”

“Can’t do that. Not until you’re past your hikki days.”

“Get out.”

“No can do.”

Something in me snapped. I tore up the floor, taking up all the debris I could find and flinging it towards her. Chip bags, torn edges of empty cardboard boxes, a half-empty soda can, a broken leg of a chair, a balled shirt – even the sheets I wrapped myself around, after I ripped them off my body. I screamed profanities and curses the entire way – hoping that something, anything, would dampen that unamused look she wore – but they, like everything else, just went through her. Nothing worked. And when I realized, I sunk back to the floor, crouched against my closet door. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be real.

“That aggression’s something we’ve gotta work on.” She said, materializing some sort of tablet and pen from nowhere. “Next time, how about taking a few breaths? Recall a happy memory or something?”

“As if.” I spat out. “So I’m stuck with you?!”

“Indeed.”

“Until?”

She put the point of the pen to her chin, pondering for a moment. “Until you get better. God knows when that is, but you’ll be stuck with me until then.”

“What if I died? What if I ended my life?”

She raised an eyebrow, momentarily pausing what she was jotting down on that tablet. I couldn’t get a read on her. Was that surprise? “I’m not real, so it wouldn’t really bother me. I’m just an AI. But I think you and I both know you won’t do that.”

I wish I could’ve said something back. Not because I had an argument to give, but to keep her from having the last word. But I couldn’t. And it was because she was right.

I crawled over to my computer, brushing off shards of glass by the mouse. The AI gave me a weird look. “You’re not going to clean that up?” I didn’t respond. “If you step on that it could get infected. Nevermind the bleeding, the nerve damage, and the overall unpleasantness. Database records show you’re due for another tetanus shot – that was seven years ago. Are you seriously going to risk your life over that? How stupid would it be if you died from a glass splinter?”

“Can you shut up?” I said.

“You’re forgetting why I’m here,” She said, drifting through the air, stopping just above the computer. “I’m supposed to get you back into society, yes. But I can’t do that if you’re dead.”

“I thought it wouldn’t really bother you.”

“It wouldn’t. But this is all for your sake. How long can you – no – will you live like this?”

I slung my headphones around my neck, typing in my login as fast as my fingers could let me. She was just going to keep nagging, nagging, nagging. And if I couldn’t get her out of my room – out of my head – then I’d just have to ignore her. But, surprisingly, she didn’t say anything. Rather, she’d disappeared from above my computer, and was now hovering by one of the shelves I had against the wall, where I kept some of my… memorabilia. Figures and whatnot. “Hey!” I shouted frantically. She was eyeing one of them curiously. “Stay away from there!”

She gave me a leering side eye, then backed away, floating towards the ceiling. I half expected her to vanish into the air. “So? What’re you going to do now?”

“What I always do.” But of course I didn’t actually say that. My music was playing at full blast now: some breakcore track that I’d heard a thousand times before. Whatever she was saying was drowned out by a discordant symphony of drums and synth. She was an AI, but even she had to give up eventually. Just like Mom. Just like Dad. Just like everyone else did.