Awakening.
I woke with a jolt, a surge of static pain blooming at the base of my skull. Blinding lights stung my eyes. The world above me smeared itself into jagged shapes, gleaming with metal and trembling shadows. I tried to move, but something heavy—the table, the restraints, maybe the fear I breathed in—kept me pinned down. A cold hand pressed against my forehead. “Stay still,” someone whispered just above me. The voice vibrated with urgency, and I wanted to trust it, but the chip in my neck made me doubt everyone's intentions. Maybe even my own. I heard the whine of a tool, sharp and close to my ear. The air reeked of disinfectant, solder, and something else—a faint, burned sweetness that made my gut twist.“We have to get the chip out before the signal returns,” a second voice insisted, softer but edged with panic. That’s when the fear really hit me.
Not the old, programmed kind, but something raw and human. My mind tried to fracture—flashes of alarms and running feet collided with steady, artificial calm the chip once forced onto me. I fought to open my eyes. Overhead, masked faces hovered, their eyes hard and unfamiliar. On one mask, I caught a flicker of the old resistance emblem—jagged silver over faded red. “You’re safe now,” one of them said, but safety tasted like blood on my tongue. My world narrowed to the cold, to the pressure at my neck, to the wild hope that maybe, just maybe, this time I wasn’t waking up as someone else’s machine.
