The slums were called that for a reason; even now, in the age of technological enlightenment, that word kept its meaning and connotations: old, run-down, inadequate. It was the most densely populated block in the entire Arcology, where the poorest lived.

Arnel had never seen the slums before, and they made his apartment block look like a luxurious hotel. Old water pipes ran along the ceiling, and perhaps some of the adjacent pipes ran electrical wiring. Even the door to his new apartment seemed like something out of a holofilm, made of wood and braced with metal bars. Gen-pop blocks did not have any particular scents to them, but the entire hallway smelled of paint and chemicals.

For a safe house, it was not bad. It could’ve been a lot worse.

Beneath the slums were the agriculture, industrial and reactor blocks, and above were the other population, commerce and entertainment blocks. Not that there was no commerce or entertainment down here — Arnel saw the flashing neon signs of various establishments outside the window — but they were not sanctioned by the Arcology’s Board of Development. They were not exactly legal.

Strictly speaking, the slums were the perfect place to hide. Unlike the blocks above, here, all the structures were of uniform height, connected by twisted passageways that required a guide to navigate. It was a labyrinth above which a sea of drones carried goods between the blocks, with more rivers of drones running through the central arteries that passed between the many buildings.

Arnel stared at such a stream of drones through the window and pondered his tragic connection to them. Now, he could no longer see individual machines in them, but only saw the whole as if it was a string of fate that connected his past to this unfortunate present. However, there was now another who was connected via this string of tragic fate, and Arnel could hear her breathing through the closed door next to him.

By now, it did not surprise him anymore that his artificial eye could do more than justenhance his vision; It sharpened all his senses to an unbelievable degree; even senses he did not think he had or thought were possible — like seeing around corners as if they did not exist, if camera footage was available. Of course, these were not his senses, but those of a machine, and merely relayed to his brain.

For once, oddly enough, this did not terrify him. Maybe, he vainly thought, he could help someone now — at least, himself perhaps. But the one he wanted to help the most, at that moment, was already beyond help.

His artificial eye could not revive the dead.

He was also hyper-aware of the pain he felt; extracting himself from the machines that preserved his life was neither easy nor painless. Now, IV attachment points burned against his skin, hidden by his long sleeves, and reminded him of things he did not want to think about. At the very least, he was lucky enough not to wake his guardians while he was ripping off electrodes and sensors. They slept soundly, further reaffirming his theory that he was unconscious for a long while, and that they only went to sleep when his situation became stable.

Worst of all, he did not feel like he was dead — if he was dead. If anything, he only felt as if he had a bad nap. The thought made him want to laugh. His first thought after coming back to life was to acknowledge that he was thirsty.

Subconsciously, he pressed his hand to his chest, where a bullet drilled a hole in him, and his wayward thoughts touched on a forbidden topic. If her parents also had the Extinction Virus, would they be alive now?

The Extinction Virus — the same disease that took his mother’s life when he was young; one could live for years carrying it, or seconds, before it turned fatal. It could not be transmitted from human to human, nor did anyone know how one contracted it, except for the one thing that was in common among its victims: contact with the world outside the borders of the Commonwealth.

When Leviathan spoke of the Consolidation Virus, it immediately reminded Arnel of the most deadly and mysterious disease that plagued Humanity in this day and age.

The Extinction Virus.

Perhaps, in a world that did not experience fatal accidents or injuries, or war or crime, the underlying condition that allowed something like the Extinction Virus to exist was not immediately apparent. But when Arnel was shot and his wounds repaired almost instantly, he understood, on an intuitive level, that it was because of nanomachines.

Every citizen had them in their body — it came with the chip inside the nape of their neck, and allowed them to interface with the vast network that existed because of AGMI. In other words, everyone had the Extinction Virus.

Consolidation Virus.

More and more, it made sense to Arnel then, that the Consolidation Virus and the Extinction Virus were the same thing — or at least pointed to the same underlying condition: nanomachines.

In a moment of lucid clarity, his mind reached for a seemingly unrelated topic and his subconscious queried it for information. Is this why “ferals” refused to be citizens? Did they know?

Arnel desperately wanted to disprove or reject his hypothesis that the Extinction Virus and nanomachines were unrelated, but he couldn’t. If these nanomachines, under some external influence, could be forced to replicate to the point that from the small amount contained in the Citizen Chip they could be numerous enough to heal his injuries, then it stood to reason that they could also do the opposite.

He had it too. The same disease that took away the most important person to him — the Extinction Virus — would also one day claim his life. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps in a decade. Stranger still, he was not afraid.

What kind of entity could instruct seemingly mindless machines, with a simple task to act as an interface between flesh and machine, to perform other tasks?

As Arnel stared at the lane of drones, his expression twisted into one that more resembled disdain than calm or neutral.

AGMI. They could do it.

Thinking of AGMI reminded him of his most recent encounter with one, and more importantly, the person who looked exactly like Priscilla: Code Empress. At least, Arnel thought that person was Code Empress — she commanded a Machine Arsenal. The fact that she looked like Priscilla did not concern Arnel immediately. Why? Nineteen looked like Arnel. It was entirely possible that Arnel saw, in his visions, whomever he wanted to see, regardless of their true likeness.

During a brief lull in drone traffic, Arnel stopped hesitating in front of her door. He gathered his courage, and then he knocked twice.

“Who is it?” her voice came from within the room after a brief pause.

“It’s me,” Arnel said, quieter than he intended. His courage already started faltering, and he realized that perhaps he wished she was asleep, or didn’t hear his knocking.

Another pause, this time longer, and then she called out once more. “Come in.”

For some reason, he knocked once more before opening the door. His nervousness was already an obvious sign, but the moment he stepped into the room and saw her, every idea and plan on how this conversation might go evaporated.

He walked to the center of the room, lit only by the still image on the holoscreen, and he could not produce a sound, much less a hello, or a less formal hi. It was as if the room was shrouded in suffocating darkness and silence.

Judging by the redness of her cheeks and nostrils, she had been crying for a while, and heavily too. Her mascara had been smeared across her eyelids, and some traces of it were also on her cheeks with clear traces of frantic wiping. The backs of her hands were also stained with the dark remnants of make-up.

She wasn’t crying anymore. She didn’t even look at him, either. She simply stared blankly at the holoscreen.

As the silence dragged on for a dozen seconds, and then longer, Arnel felt more and more inadequate and out of place; he wanted to run. Quickly, he began to regret this visit, but he knew he would regret fleeing even more.

“I keep hoping that I will wake up and this will all have been a nightma—,” Jennifer finally said, and her tone cracked near the end of that statement.

Arnel’s heart imploded, turning into a black hole that sucked all the light and whatever happiness there was into its impenetrable void. His expression twisted into a grimace, and he fought with all his strength to keep himself from crying. He knew that pain all too well.

“I know,” he said, quietly.

Finally, he willed himself to move forward, despite his synapses begging him to flee. Still, he put one foot in front of the other, not for his sake, but for hers. She was important. It was strange how a person can realize this too late.

As he sat down next to her, he remembered all sorts of details that slipped his mind about his friendship with Jennifer. How she was always there at every one of his birthdays, how they shared interesting thoughts of their future together, or how, for a while at least, it seemed like all they needed was each other.

But now, as she took his hand and buried her head into his shoulder, all he could think of was how inadequate of a companion he was to her. Only now, when she was truly alone in the world, did he realize he neglected her.

With such thoughts, his tears broke free, and he silently spilled their regrets and woes on his lap. She didn’t cry. She likely had no more tears left — no more heart left to die.

“I am so sorry,” Arnel whispered, unleashing all the poison that has been gnawing at his heart for so long — all the guilt and regret that he had kept locked away within his heart. “I would give everything to go back in time, and…”

When he felt Jennifer look up at him, he continued. “If it wasn’t for me, this wouldn’t have happened. If it wasn’t for me, they wo—“

“It’s not your fault,” Jennifer said calm. She sniffed sharply, and then once more wiped at her mascara-smeared eyes.

Her reasonable and calm tone surprised Arnel. He swallowed, hesitating with his answer.

“It’s not your fault. They knew this would happen when they developed your eye,” she said, her fingers reaching towards his artificial eye — which looked like a normal eye — and she stroked his eyebrow.

This was a revelation to Arnel. He always knew that he received the surgery in the first place because of her parents — they were Heads of Development on cybernetics. But this was the first time he learned that they developed the implant themselves.

“What do you mean?” Arnel asked.

“I found out from Theta.”

Arnel’s brows furrowed. “You talked to Theta?”

Jennifer shook her head, sniffing once more, and then shrugged. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “She spoke to my ghost. I had dreams, Arnel.” Her face distorted once more, brows furrowing and lips quirking downwards, as if she might cry again. “In one of them, Theta told my parents that if they developed the Mind-Machine Interface, that they would die.”

Arnel swallowed. “Then why did they…?”

“I don’t know. Theta looked at me and said that the Gestalt Mandate prevented her from saving them.”

Arnel’s eyes narrowed to thin slits at those words.

“I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why,” she whined, her voice cracking once again. She hugged Arnel tighter, but once again, the tears would not come.

As Arnel looked away from his friend, his eye was naturally drawn towards the holoscreen. There was a picture of Jennifer’s parents, and another figure that Arnel immediately recognized. He would never forget that man.

Ermin Saltzer, the Head of AI Development. More disturbing was the small pop-up text-block above the man’s head.

Why did Arnel never realize this? Why was the Head of AI Development so interested in Arnel — a patient that was irrelevant to AI, under the assumption Ermin Saltzer did not know about Leviathan?

It wasn’t Arnel that Ermin was interested in. It was the implant itself. It was the first tool Humanity created to merge a Trained Agent and a brain — possibly the consciousness itself.

< Name: Ermin Saltzer. Occupation: Scientist. Employment: Classified. Criminal activity: Sabotage of Icarus-4. >

Dread, hatred, and anger suddenly filled Arnel’s heart.

“I had a dream that you killed someone for me,” Jennifer said, as she lay her head on Arnel’s shoulder, voice distant as if she was falling asleep. “You did it for me. So that I could live.” Her voice became fainter and fainter.

Arnel’s heart became as cold as a glacier.

Another message appeared on the holoscreen.

[ Deucalion: Execute strike against subject? ]

Arnel stared at the message, and then reluctantly shook his head, and the message disappeared.

“It was just a dream,” Arnel said, with a tone that was filled with frost. “It was just a nightmare.”

Jennifer shook her head. “It was the only dream that wasn’t a nightmare.”

And then his heart melted. Within an instant, he felt absolved. All the guilt he carried over what he had done disappeared.

“Would you do such a thing?” she asked. “Would you kill someone?”

A beeping noise filled the room, indicating that criminal thought patterns were detected. It wasn’t just Jennifer’s comm that produced this noise. It was Arnel’s too.

The block of text above Ermin’s head had a new line added to it.

“I would,” Arnel said.

< Mind-Machine Interface synchronization: 75% >