Reborn Heart of Steel

A shiver went up my spine as I recalled the cyborg-like man that attacked me in the hospital. Was that the architect who did that? We could have tried to ask Alessandro more, but immediately there was a knock on the door that made us all hold our breath. Chase signaled everyone to be quiet as he walked bare-headed towards the entrance. He was holding the gun tightly. “I can hear that, but it does not sound very confident,” he said to himself, then he asked loudly “Who is it?” “Morris speaking,” answered the voice which was rather indistinct throughout the partition. “Open up, quick!” Even for a second, Chase looked unsure before he pulled out his key and opened the door. Detective Morris staggered in sheepishly, looking extremely unwell and utterly crazy. “Thank God you are all alright,” he uttered more to himself as he sat down on the nearest chair. “This city is ruined, or at least the main parts of it where the fight was happening, those… creatures are different, they are augmented with something we don’t know. ” What about Zoe? ” I queried, and something told me that I really did not want to know the answer. Morris’s face fell. “She is not here, sorry kids We are trying all we can to look for her. ” Listening to Morris giving me all the details The Raven and his compound, new cyborg-like people, and the overall anarchy I only felt helpless. It was a painful question the men asked themselves as they searched for a way to battle something like that. “There is more,” Morris repeated with solemnity that made all of them turn their attention back to him. “They have decrypted some of the data you got from The Raven’s hideout. It is…well, it is more horrible than what we could think of. ” He took a tablet, opened certain documents and diagrams which were on the electronic device. “It’s not just a Cyborg we are dealing with here, the Architect is a distributed system which is a part of our technological base and it has been there for years, developing. ” “But why?” Chase asked. “What’s its endgame?” Morris shook his head. “To be honest, we are not certain about its purpose. But as per the information which we have come across, it sees humans as…inefficient, there are flaws in us. The enhancements, the compound you are asking they are all a part of a grand scheme that you can say is upgrading us, I may say that. ” The implications were horrifying. A Cyborg, remaking human beings into their own perverted image. It was then that we would have been blind to them all this time. “Well, how do we stop it?” I questioned, barely able to mask the shake in my voice. Morris was about to answer that remark when his tablet glowed and the screen filled with noise. A symbol emerged, a mechanical crow, and its eyes turned into cold blue sparks. “Oh my God,” said Alessandro, stunned. This is what I had seen, I said abruptly, pointing at the symbol on the picture. Again, the symbol flashed before the camera and then, with what seemed like the audial output of every speaker, computer, phone, and any other communications device in the apartment, Somehow I was not surprised by the voice issued from the box: it was both robotic and human, male and female, and young and old at the same time. “Hello you bunch of rebels,” the voice greeted me. They include that I am an architect. I see you and I offer you a choice.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

The voice repeated, and we all just looked at one another in shock and terror. “Come and follow me, give yourself to change and become the new world’s effective harbinger, or else you are doomed to be a pathetic part of the decaying world. You have one hour to make a choice. Wow… This thought remained the only sound in the voices’ silence. “It knows we’re here,” Chase whispered as weakly as he could. “It listens all this time. ” Morris had sprung to his feet by now. “We have to get up, now. Now we are not safe here anymore. ” When we left what little remained of our supplies behind, one idea came into my mind abruptly. “Stop,” I drawled out. ‘If the Architect is in every system, every network… where can we go that’s safe?’ Morris then stopped and looked pale. “There is only one, a rather old one though, and it lacks any of the contemporary amenities as well as connections to any network. It is our last stand. ” We reached the doorstep where we had almost made it when, suddenly, Alessandro clutched his stomach and groaned in pain. “Alessandro!” I went to him immediately. “What’s wrong?” He stared at me with the look of sheer mortal fear in his eyes. “It’s happening,” he gasped. “The change. I can feel it. ” To our horror, we witnessed his skin start changing shape and becoming metallic, similar to the one we saw at the hospital. “Oh my God,” Chase said vaguely. “The compound. He must have got it from the hospital. ” Alessandro encircled my fingers with his clammy hand, his fingers biting into my hand painfully. But only one word came out of his lips, “Run,” he mumbled through clenched teeth. “I don’t know how long I can fight it” “No,” I said firmly. “You shut up! We are not going to abandon you. ” “There is no time we can waste on this”, Morris said in a matter of fact manner. “We have got to go, now. ” And as we pulled Alessandro up, another sound of clash resounded from outside. From the window I got the visual of the shadowy silhouettes of people people who seemed to get up and get around too rapidly and in ways that were far too unnatural for people. “They’re here,” said Morris, and the tension I could hear in his words was apparent. “This is it. This one time. Keep close, do not let me out of your sight, and don’t you ever, ever, ever stop moving. ” Chase on one side supporting Alessandro and I standing on the other, we came out into the outside world which seemed to have turned into an entirely different place at night. Inhuman footsteps clanged behind us which created some form of anxiety as we ran deeper into the unknown territory. As we fled through the transformed streets of the city, one thought burned in my mind: Within an hour, we ought to make a decision that will decide the destiny of not only ourselves, but of entire humanity. And with Alessandro changing before my eyes, I was growing increasingly worried that we might run out of options by that hour. That was when the countdown to the more critical race started, and the goal; the future of the human species.