The silence that followed was almost unbearable.
The wind carried only the hiss of settling dust, the faint pop of cooling metal. Above the ravine, hundreds of drones hung motionless—like puppets with their strings cut, eyes dimmed, weapons lowered.
Acapan kept his rifle raised anyway. “Laura,” he said carefully. “Can you hear me?”
She stood at the center of the chaos, her back to him, her hair whipped by the storm. The blue light under her skin pulsed in rhythm with the frozen drones. It was beautiful...and terrifying.
He took one step closer. “You’re controlling them, aren’t you?”
Her voice came out hollow, layered. “Not controlling… remembering.”
The glow in her eyes flickered, then dimmed. She swayed. Acapan caught her just before she collapsed, lowering her to the ground.
“Hey, hey...breathe. You’re okay.”
She clutched his uniform, trembling. “I felt… everything. The network, the commands, the fear. They’re not just machines. They’re fragments. Parts of others, like me.”
Acapan froze. “You mean the prototypes?”
“They’re pieces of us. The Capital tore memory apart and scattered it across every model. I t-think I pulled it back.”
He looked up at the silent army above them. “Then you’re not just a glitch in their system, Laura. You are the system breaking free.”
Her breathing steadied, but her face was pale. “It hurts,” she whispered. “Every time I connect, it’s like being burned from the inside. But I can see where they are. The others. I think… I can free them.”
He wanted to tell her to stop. To save her...but the look in her eyes silenced him. He saw conviction.
“You said Dr. Voss built us to remember,” she said. “Maybe this is what she meant.”
The sky above flashed again. Red this time. Warning lights streaked across the horizon. The Capital had noticed.
Acapan helped her to her feet. “Then we move now. Before they send something worse.”
She nodded weakly. The wind picked up, carrying the static hum of far-off engines.
As they started toward the coordinates from Voss’s message, Acapan glanced back once more at the drones.
They stood in perfect formation, facing the Capital’s direction. They seemed to be waiting a command.
“Lira,” he said quietly. “What happens when they realize you can control them?”
Her answer came after a long pause.
“Then...I might stop being human.”
***
The desert stretched endlessly beneath a bruised sky.
Ruined towers jutted from the sand like broken teeth, and the wind howled through their hollow frames, a mournful song of a world that had long since forgotten itself.
They traveled mostly by night. The day was too harsh, the light too revealing. Acapan led the way, scanning the horizon through the scope of his rifle, every step measured, every silence heavy.
Lira followed close behind, her movements slower now, as though each mile took more out of her than the last. The faint blue under her skin had dimmed, but it never disappeared.
“How far?” she asked, voice hoarse.
He glanced at the tracker. “Two days. Maybe less if we keep moving.”
She nodded. “I can hold.”
He didn’t believe her, but he didn’t say so. Instead, he offered his canteen. She took it, their fingers brushing briefly. A small, human moment in the endless wasteland.
They found shelter that night beneath the remnants of a wind farm. Rusted turbines loomed above, their blades groaning softly in the dark. Acapan built a small fire, its glow barely enough to ward off the chill.
Laura sat across from him, staring into the flames. “You never asked,” she said quietly.
“About what?”
“Why I ran.”
He kept his eyes on the fire. “Didn’t seem like I had the right.”
“I saw something,” she continued. “Before I escaped. A memory that wasn’t supposed to be there. A little girl. Crying, reaching for me. I think she was real.”
Acapan looked up. “Someone you knew?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was one of the originals. Maybe I’m her echo.” She gave a faint, bitter smile. “Maybe I’m no one at all.”
He shook his head. “No. You’re someone. I’ve seen machines break. You....? You fight.”
“Fighting doesn’t make me human.”
“No, it doesn't” he said. “But choosing does.”
She met his gaze then, the firelight flickering across her face. For a moment, the soldier and the prototype were just two people lost in a world that didn’t want them.
A distant rumble broke the quiet. The ground trembled beneath them.
Acapan was on his feet in an instant, rifle ready. “Tanks.”
Laura closed her eyes, reaching out with that strange awareness again. “Not tanks,” she murmured. “Trackers. The Capital’s ground units. They’re sweeping the sector.”
“How close?”
She opened her eyes. Fear flickering there. “Too close.”
They moved before the fire could die, their shadows stretching long behind them. As they crested a ridge, the first glimmer of the Capital’s patrol lights shimmered far below. An unending line of steel crawling across the sands.
“Voss better be real,” Acapan muttered.
“She is,” Lira said softly, almost certain. “I can feel her calling.”
He looked at her then, the exhaustion etched deep into both their faces. The mission, the betrayal, the war....all of it had brought them here. To this fragile thread of belief.
And still, he followed her.
Because for the first time since the Capital fell into tyranny, Acapan had something worth protecting that wasn’t born of orders—but of choice.
YOU ARE READING
PROTOTYPE ZERO
Science FictionThey were never meant to exist-only to be tested. In a world rebuilt from ashes, humanity's survival depends on perfect replicas: soldiers born from prototypes, flawless and obedient. But when the system glitched, the prototypes awakened... and reme...
