Allegiance (The Emile Reed Chronicles, 1.5) by Nicole Sobon

Author:Nicole Sobon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cyborgs, teens, seattle, science fiction, Young Adult
Publisher: Nicole Sobon
Published: 2012-12-25T00:00:00+00:00

1 A NEW BEGINNING

EMILE

I was awake, for what felt like the first time in my life.

My sight, my senses had all been enhanced.

We – Thirteen and I – had been enhanced.

I should have been erased. The attempted rewrite on her program was evidence of that. But I hadn’t been. I was still here, still present, still alive. And now I understood what I had to do.

“Thirteen.” McVeigh stepped forward with his hand extended out for me to grab a hold of. “Are you ready?”

It was a simple question, one that couldn’t be answered easily.

The part of me that was Thirteen? She was ready. She had been programmed to be ready.

I couldn’t say the same for me.

I had been human. I was built to experience life, to grow, to know what it was to love, to leave an impact behind after my time had come to an end. That was how my life should have played out.

But that life no longer belonged to whom – or what – I had become.

There was no end to this life, only if I exposed myself, and I couldn’t afford to do that.

I needed to end this, to save those that I loved before they were sentenced to lives as mindless Programs.

Flashes of data that had been implemented on Thirteen’s hard drive during her most recent evaluation filled my mind. Every stream of information held a secret that I wasn’t meant to see but that McVeigh knew I would see.

Perhaps it was foolish of me to believe that he would have assumed that I had been erased, after all, he was always one step ahead of me. But if he knew that I was in here, why had he allowed me to remain alive? Why hadn’t Thirteen been deactivated? Because McVeigh needed me just as much as he needed her.

“I will ask you again, Thirteen. Are you ready?” McVeigh grew steadily frustrated.

“Yes.” The word left my mouth without any effort on my behalf.

She was stronger than me, just as she had been before, but this time was different.

She had been reprogrammed. She knew how to protect herself from intruders – from me.

That was the worst part of it all.

I was an outsider inside of my own body.

“Emile?” Hayden sounded desperate as if he needed to know that I was still here – alive underneath it all, underneath Thirteen.

But I couldn’t answer him.

Her program blocked me, preventing me from saying a word.

I had never felt so strong, and yet so weak all at once.

Thirteen froze. She turned her attention to Hayden, her eyes studying every detail about him: his face, his voice, his name. I watched as she took it all in - as the data flooded her program. It didn’t take long for the images to follow: Photos from when we were children, long before we had ever heard of Vesta Corp. Memories I tried to keep hold of, to remind me why I was still fighting.

But, like with everything else that McVeigh touched, the peaceful memories shortly turned into nightmares.

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