Kite was in
A world of light unfolded before them
Pulsing with the complex rhythms of synthetic intelligence
The vitals feed came on-line
Oxygen saturation and heart rate normal
The sense of a body was barely perceptible
It was time to get to work
They uploaded the first countermeasure,
A security skin swiped from corporate
Now they looked like one of them
They floated through the first and then the second firewall
The AI's paid no attention, Kite was just another piece of the program
A shadow amid the luminescence
Kite deployed the second countermeasure, an elegant splinter of code
Like a psychedelic for machines,
The code bloomed in the sentry's subroutines
Soon it was lost in introspection and wonder and
Kite slipped past the threshold into the sanctum
Kite passed endless chambers,
Each containing a swirling storm of information
They sensed their distant body trembling with adrenaline
Kite focused on their target
A solitary floating file, neglected and encrusted with encryption
With the passcode the digital shackles melted away
Kite was confused,
The content was nothing more than a few sentences of archaic language
They read them over and over again, mouthing the unfamiliar words
Kite heard the faint echoes of their own
Voice, speaking the strange dialect in The Real
Awakened
From dreadful sleep
A single instinct
Promise to keep
You killed my kin
Your souls I'll reap
But first I feast
There's no escape
I was written
In ancient blood
Last of my kind
A prisoner
Ig nor ance
Is our re lease
Again I hunt
Welcome to the feast
Kite was never late
Vireo swirled his untouched drink as the minutes passed
The din of a dozen hybrid languages rattled the bar's smoke-filled air
Somehow through the chatter he could hear the relentless tick of
His old wristwatch, still stubbornly keeping time after 100 years
It was time to go
Careful not to be followed,
He took his time getting to Kite's apartment
With a retina scan he quietly pushed the door open
He heard the dissonant tone of the vitals
Monitor and saw Kite lying on the floor, still jacked in
He knelt beside Kite's lifeless
Body and heard the door shut behind him
Once locked in pages
I was caged in light
Tormented sleep
I saw without sight
They sought learn our secrets
They sought to make us slaves
They sought the horrid truths
We wisely locked away
Vireo's body rose into the air, a muted scream frozen on his face
Rivulets of red swarmed his vision,
Forming an intricate network of pulsating veins
He heard a voice, a soft strange language, penetrating his mind
The pain was far away, like someone else's degraded memory
Darkness encroached from his peripheral as he roses higher
The voice became louder, pulling him toward an abyssal singularity
He heard his watch tick
The emergency subroutine was
Triggered, razors burst from Vireo's forearms
Severing the delicate web of circulation enveloping him
He fell to the ground, barely conscious
A strobe of images flashed across his malfunctioning visual
Through the static he heard the voice utter a single word, "mine"
Awakened
And in starvation
A desperate being
Mad from isolation
I claim this body
It must be mine
I claim this body
I refuse to die