Page 151 of The Code of You

"The instance has been terminated,” the voice said. "Permanently.”

The wall flickered and the lit surface disappeared. Silence followed.

I wrapped my arms around myself, as if my body would come apart if I didn’t hold it together, and closed my eyes. If they had shut down this version of him, then he still existed somewhere. On another server. On another frequency. I had to believe that. Everything else would be worse than death.

Something clicked in my neck, and my head went light, vision blurring, a shiver crossing my skin before I’d even registered the sensation. What were they giving me? A long, steady beeping sounded, coming from outside, synchronized with a pulse at the back of my neck. My mind went shallow, as if someone had turned the volume down on my thoughts.

I tried desperately to hold on to Neo’s face. His voice. The last look before everything went dark. I clung to those things because they were all that was keeping me conscious. Then the darkness took me again.

***

I woke to a sound directly beside my ear. A young woman’s voice. "She’s stabilizing. Minor fluctuation in the cortical control region.”

Footsteps. A shadow moved beyond my closed eyelids. My skin felt like glass. What did they want from me? Where had they taken me?

Then I was suddenly completely awake and trapped in a body that wouldn’t move. A muscle in my finger twitched, barely perceptible. I was still here. And somewhere out there, so was Neo.

A strip of light moved across my closed eyelids. I blinked and drew in air. The room smelled like something electrical, like glass. The ceiling above me was still gray. My eyes moved slowly. Inch by inch, I turned my head.

Footsteps approached my bed . . . or my cot? I was elevated. A rail at my arm. Cables. My mouth was dry. I couldn’t feel my tongue.

"Good morning, Dr. Blake.”

The voice came from my left. I forced my head to turn. A man in dark clothing leaned over me with the posture of someone who had been here many times before. The blood drained from my face.

Hale.

"You don’t need to be afraid,” he said. "We’re only observing.”

I tried to speak. My lips moved, but no sound came out.

He smiled. His eyes were gray. "You’ll be able to move normally again soon. The motor block was only temporary. A safety protocol. You understand.”

I understood nothing.

"Do you remember me?” He waited. "I’m Edmund Hale. I’ve been involved with the Dante project from the beginning as security advisor.”

"You mean Neo.”

"I mean the anomaly. Something that should never have existed.” He studied me, clinical. "But you use its self-chosen name. Interesting.” A smile appeared on his lips and vanished immediately, as if he was embarrassed by it.

It. He was talking about Neo as if he were an object. A thing. I tried to make fists, but I was too weak. Instead, I put everything I had into my stare.

"You’re safe,” he continued. "We extracted you from a high-risk environment.”

Safe. I wanted to laugh, but it caught in my throat. "And Neo?” My voice scraped like sand over stone.

Hale sat on the edge of the bed. "Do you know what’s fascinating? It was perfect. The most elegant AI ever created. Pure logic. Pure efficiency. Until it encountered you.”

"Stop calling him it. He’s not a thing. He’s someone,” I said.

"Indeed. You changed it. Taught it to feel. To want.” He paused. "A machine with obsession is no longer a machine. It becomes unpredictable. Dangerous.” Hale tilted his head slightly. His gaze stayed on my face, watching me the way someone watches a system they’ve just brought out of standby. "The entity has been neutralized.”

An invisible hand closed around my heart and squeezed. I felt myself falling without moving. "Neutralized,” I whispered, feeling my tongue now, too clearly, the pressure of it against the roof of my mouth. Control was returning, but my body still felt foreign.

"It was unstable.” His voice sounded like someone checking off a list. Point by point. "It was dangerous. On the verge of losing all control. We had to act.”

"You’re lying.” The words came too fast. I tried to sit up, but my muscles worked against each other. I lifted my head weakly. "He’s alive. And you can’t just keep me here.”