“It sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? A cyborg, an android, and an artilect walk into a bar. What’s the difference between them, you ask? A cyborg is a human being whose physiology has been enhanced by machines, to perform like a machine. An android, or robot, is a humanoid machine, but dumbed down to perform the functions of a human. And the artilect? Well, that’s just short for artificial intellect. Androids could arguably be considered artilects. But the ones everyone’s getting all worked up about, the real artilects, would appear human but possess an intelligence far greater than our own and have the potential for sentience. And therein lies the problem.”

—Emily Fraser-Herondale, Of Gods and Monsters: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

“Ailith? Ailith?”

His hands were heavy on my shoulders. I was sitting on the bed, the edge sagging under my weight. The duvet was turned inside out; it was one of the few things in the room not covered with dust. The man—Tor?—knelt before me. “Are you okay?”

“What happened?” My finger circled the bed of my thumbnail. I could still feel my anticipation of what was to come.

Except, it wasn’t my anticipation. I’d never worked with CIVR addicts, never even seen one. But it hadn’t felt like a dream either; everything had felt real, had smelled real. It was like I’d been in someone else’s mind, watching from behind their eyes. I’d known her thoughts, felt what she’d felt, but I’d had no agency of my own.

Only one thing was clear: she’d been about to become a cyborg, like me. Like us.

“You seemed to black out for a moment.”

“I was… I don’t know. It was like a dream. I was in a house. There were…” I suddenly remembered that I was a captive and flung myself backward. Or at least, my imagination did. My body stayed firmly rooted on the bed, held immobile by his iron grip.

“Let go of me!” To my surprise, he did. And actually had the nerve to look offended. What the hell is going on? “What am I doing here? Why was I tied down?”

“What do you remember?”

Nothing. “I— Tell me!” For just a moment, my words were outlined in a jagged radiance.

His eyes widened, and his shoulders snapped back.

“Where are we? Why did you tie me down?”

“We’re in the Kootenays. You…you were having seizures. It was like you were trying to wake up but couldn’t. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself. It’s only been for the last week.”

I searched his face for deception. He’s telling the truth. I think. I relaxed. The Kootenays. Shit. The Kootenays was a mountain region far from home.

His shoulders slumped as though released, and he took a small, gasping breath.

It was time to stop planning my escape; I was completely at his mercy for the time being. But it was more than that. I may not have known this room, but he felt familiar, safe. I was sure of it. If he had meant me harm, why would he have bothered to make sure the duvet was clean?

Clean duvet? Tied you to a bed? Yeah, seems legit to me, the more sensible side of me snarked.

I ignored it.

“Why am I—are we—here?”

“Can’t you remember anything?”

“I was ill. I was in the hospital. I was going to have an operation.” I remembered the ward linen, scratchy against my broken skin. My green-eyed nurse; her android assistant. But was that this time? Or was that months ago?

“I was having an operation,” I repeated.

He nodded encouragingly. “Do you remember why?”

“I was dying.”

“What else?”

He was right. There had been something else. My stomach. For the first time in years, the skin was almost smooth.

“Ailith?”

I had forgotten to answer him, distracted by the lack of ridges and puckers.

“Pantheon Modern. I was in the Pantheon Modern program.” My voice sounded far away. I remembered it all. My illness. The application for the Pantheon Modern Cyborg Program Omega. My acceptance. Haste. And then, pain. “It was too soon.”

“Yes. But you survived. And here you are.” He smiled, pleased that I remembered.

“Here I am.” I echoed, “Why am I here?”

His smile faltered. He grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and set it in front of me. He wouldn’t look at me, but the ashen color of his skin told me that something bad had happened. The war. When I’d gone into the hospital the final time, rumors were swirling that the conflict between the Cosmists and the Terrans was at breaking point. The Pantheon Modern Program was rushing, trying to establish itself as a mediator between the two.

“The war?” I asked. “Has it started?”

He ran his fingers roughly through his hair. Too roughly.

“Tor?” His name was easy on my tongue. Intimate.

He leaned toward me and peered into my eyes. “Ailith, the war is over.”

“Over? Surely that’s got to be a world record for the shortest war in history. I only went into the hospital a week ago.” But even as I said it aloud, it sounded hollow. I was too thin. My scars were practically gone, and I was in a dilapidated house with a strange man. A man who was like me.

“How long?” I whispered.

In his strong hands mine were dwarfed, small and fragile. His eyes never left my face. “Five years.”

No air was left in my lungs. I didn’t understand.

It’s true , a voice whispered in my head.

But it couldn’t be true. Losing a day or two of my memory was one thing, but five years? Never. Which meant only one thing: he was one of them, and he’d abducted me from the hospital.

My coordinator for the Cyborg Program Omega had warned me about them. Extremists who disagreed with the advanced cyberization the Pantheon Modern program had proposed, even though it was supposed to have been a secret. It was the only time Terrans and Cosmists had worked together to destroy a common enemy: me and others like me. Only once we were out of the way could the war over the artilects truly begin.

If this Tor was one of them, I was in trouble. But it didn’t make sense. Yet, if it wasn’t that, then what he was saying must be true, and I’d slept for five years while the rest of the world decided my fate.

The room was starting to lose clarity again, the buzzing in my head building to a crescendo. Whatever was going on, I needed to leave. I had to get somewhere safe; then I’d find out what was really happening.

His eyes were still on me. The mattress springs groaned a quiet protest as I slid off and began to sidle toward the door. This is madness. I had no chance of getting away from him. But he didn’t move. Only his gaze followed me as I crossed the bedroom and slipped through the doorway.

The front door was across the next room. Like the bedroom, this room had a fine coating of silvery dust on every surface. The footprints going forward and back across the hardwood floor were the same; he wasn’t lying when he’d said we were alone. An elaborate fireplace cradled the remains of a fire, the smoldering red embers the only living color in the room.

The same thick curtains as in the bedroom were drawn over these windows; I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Not that it mattered, because I was going regardless. He still hadn’t moved, and I didn’t know whether to be frightened or bold.

Fuck it. I’m going with bold.

I tried to walk calmly to the door but about twenty feet away, I lost my nerve and sprinted. In my imagination, his hands were only a hair away from the back of my shirt. The floor would hurt my back when I hit it; he would stand over me in victory and chuckle at my foolishness.

But he didn’t move. When my hand closed around the cold knob, I wasted a precious second looking back at him. His head was down and his hands were on his knees, as though he was bracing himself against a storm. I took a deep breath and opened the door just as one of the threads tethered to my mind flashed. And I was blind. Again.