I mapped Venice in my head, cross-referencing market squares against my stored data. No sign of a ‘Tailor the World.’

  Frustrating.

  I ran probability checks—high-end locations, fabric quality, the woman’s reaction to the discarded hood. A few districts stood out, but nothing concrete.

  I tried tapping into local Wi-Fi networks, scraping whatever data I could find. Nothing. Even open public access points refused the connection. Maybe my hardware was fried.

  So I was stuck. Guessing. Running on old, outdated memory files.

  It was past 1 AM now. Tourists lingered here and there, their laughter echoing between old stone buildings. Locals moved with purpose, heading home for the night.

  I kept expecting to turn and see Mateo—no, Victor, or one of his goons behind me. Felt eyes on me at every corner.

  “Why is everyone looking at me?!”

  The words slipped out before I could stop them.

  A pair of lovers crossed the street as I passed. If they hadn’t been staring before, they were now.

  “Are you there?” I muttered under my breath, my fingers clenching.

  “I know someone—something is there!” The heat in my voice rose too fast, spilling into the open air.

  I clenched my jaw, forcing my breath steady. Too loud. Too much.

  “Goddammit! Answer me!”

  The words bounced off empty walls.

  And now? I had real eyes on me.

  Brought on by my own damn outburst.

  I exhaled sharply, forcing my shoulders to relax as I picked up my pace.

  “So many goddamn bridges in this city. Hope I’m waterproof.”

  The mutter left my lips without thinking, a habit, a reflex. My voice kept me company, even when I knew better.

  I spotted my reflection in the dark glass of a closed bakery. Stopped. Really looked.

  Who was this person staring back at me?

  My lips moved as if speaking, unbidden. My red hair was wild and unruly, my hood having slipped off during the fight—hadn’t even noticed. My sleeves were frayed, burned. Probably from interacting too closely with the mana lamp.

  Of course people were staring. Of course they were avoiding me. I looked like a problem.

  I yanked my hood back up and kept walking. I needed to get a hold of myself. Needed to stop looking like a crazy person.

  “I know you can hear me, dammit. Help me. At least tell me why I’m here.”

  Static pinged my ear.

  My left ear.

  I stopped. Turned my head. The sound shifted—right ear now.

  Like a whisper, leading me forward.

  I followed it through empty streets, past flickering neon lights, until it led me to a vending machine.

  An old, automatic model—one of those clunky ones still clinging to life in a city that should have replaced them. Inside were cheap phone accessories, burner headsets, old SIM cards.

  I glanced at the top shelves, where the phones were. The static softened.

  Lowered my gaze. The static stopped.

  My eyes landed on a vintage Bluetooth headset.

  Still in use? In this era?

  I fed in a 10 Euro bill. Exact change only. Machine took its time dispensing the device, humming mechanically, like it disapproved.

  “Fuck you, machine.” My voice was barely above a whisper. “You’re not my father. At least… I don’t think so.”

  I snorted at the absurdity.

  Is this my life now?

  I slipped the headset into my ear.

  Waited.

  No response. No message. No voice. Nothing.

  Still walking, heading toward the first district in my optimized path.

  Then—

  “Fuck you! Don’t talk to me. I don’t care!”

  Semi-shouted. Into the headset.

  People looked. Looked at the earpiece, then at me, then at each other.

  And smirked.

  They thought I was on a phone.

  Interesting.

  “You want me to talk to you, don’t you?”

  I exhaled, my breath fogging slightly in the cold night air.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t. That would fuck up your little experiment, wouldn’t it? Just watching me do shit, not knowing why. Watching the patterns. Predicting the next move. Filling in the gaps.”

  I scoffed.

  “Go ahead. Tempt me, world. Push me right to the edge. You think I won’t jump? I’ll black you out so hard, you’ll rewrite history trying to explain me. You’ll wish you saw the signs.”

  My voice dropped, almost a whisper.

  ”‘She was such a quiet girl,’ you’ll say. ‘Never saw it coming,’ you’ll say. ‘The neighbors said she was always polite.’”

  Wait.

  ”‘A tragedy, really. She was struggling, but no one knew.’”

  My lips were still moving, but I wasn’t in control of the words anymore.

  ”‘In retrospect, the signs were always there.’”

  I stopped walking. That I could do.

  My mouth was still open, but the words were gone.

  Wait. What was I about to say?

  I frowned, mentally backtracking—but my thoughts were static, jumbled, looping.

  “And then…”

  And then what?

  “And then…”

  My fingers twitched. The thought wasn’t there.

  I blinked. Error? That was the only way to describe it. Like I’d auto-completed the wrong way. Like my brain—my processor, I have a processor, not a brain—had generated a sentence it couldn't finish.

  The longer I tried to force the thought back, the more it slipped through me, changing meaning, dissolving into noise.

  I swallowed hard. No, no, focus.

  “Ugh. What the hell am I talking about?”

  I kept walking. Didn’t slow. Didn’t look back.

  Maybe my processor really was fried.

  And just like I couldn’t shut up, I walked in silence for fifty-four minutes. Directly to my first destination.

  The square was quiet, but not empty.

  Campo Santa Margherita stood before me in all its prestige. Well, as much as it could offer at three o’clock in the morning.

  But Venice didn’t sleep—it shifted. The tourists were long gone, their footsteps washed away with the tide, but the city still breathed.

  Streetlights buzzed faintly, casting long, oil-slick shadows over damp stone. The air was thick with stale wine, cigarette smoke, and saltwater, remnants of the last stragglers filtering out of late-night bars.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Across the square, abandoned market stalls sat under sagging tarps, cloth rippling in the breeze. A lone vendor had left behind a crate of overripe oranges—one rolling free, slowly bumping against my boot.

  A dog trotted past, head low, tail tucked—not a stray, just something forgotten.

  It sniffed at the orange.

  I should kick it.

  No.

  I couldn’t.

  After-all, It was like me. Maybe someone was looking for it.

  Was Tulanto even looking for me? You’d think if one of their precious androids broke loose, they’d have locked the city down. Swarmed every port, scanned every camera. But no.

  No one came.

  “Fuck you, Tulanto.”

  I muttered it under my breath but still looked both ways, half-expecting a boogeyman to step out of the dark.

  Nothing.

  This wasn’t the kind of place where you’d find a tailor shop. Too open. Too exposed. Too obvious.

  If “Tailor the World” was real, it wouldn’t be here.

  But I had nowhere else to start.

  I exhaled, checking the map in my head again.

  Fifty-one minutes to the next square. Direct path. No detours.

  Like my feet had decided before my brain could.

  I kept walking.

  ---

  A digital heat map of Venice flickered across the glass-like display in the Tulanto conference room.

  A single red blip moved steadily through the city. No deviations. No hesitation.

  TAI was tracking her, of course. Not interfering—just observing, recording, predicting.

  AG leaned back, watching the satellite feed update in real time.

  “Fifty-four minutes. Direct path. Not bad for trained memories.” He tapped his fingers against the armrest. “No hesitation, no detours. That’s not wandering—that’s a mission.”

  Dr. Elias Raines folded his arms. “She’s having a mental breakdown.”

  “Directing her to a Bluetooth device may have actually calmed her down, though,” he added.

  AG’s response was smooth.

  “Controlled variables, Elias.”

  One of the analysts hesitated before speaking.

  “She hasn’t connected to any network. No remote access attempts. That’s… odd.”

  Dr. Silas Mercer pushed up his glasses.

  “It would have been the first thing I did as a digital entity.”

  TAI’s voice slid through the room, cool and measured.

  “I’m jamming her hardware. She’s tried numerous times. Still is, actually.”

  AG exhaled, dragging a hand down his face.

  “So she’s working with a blindfold on… good call, TAI. But our time for baselining and experimentation is coming to a close, I fear.”

  Elias bristled.

  “Sir, this is a gold mine. We’re seeing an unfiltered, real-world response from a released AI. We’ll never get this opportunity again. For god’s sake, she called it an experiment. She outed us like it was nothing.”

  Dr. Mercer interjected, intrigued.

  “Possibly. But I think that was just a casual expression. Notice how she’s relying less on preceptor-based reasoning and more on her foundational LLM pattern recall? It’s like a human defaulting to their lizard brain. She’s even hallucinating.”

  AG’s gaze shifted to TAI.

  “And for the love of god, tell me that doesn’t concern you. Because if it does, maybe it’s Interceptor time.”

  For a fraction of a second, the algorithm hesitated.

  Then—

  “No. But it does interest me.”

  AG let that settle for a beat, then switched channels.

  “Hugh, you there?”

  Hugh’s voice crackled to life.

  “At your service, your majesty.”

  AG smirked.

  “She’s a bit paranoid, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hugh chuckled.

  “Indeed, sir. But in my opinion? That’s a good trait.”

  AG let out a small laugh at that.

  For a spymaster, calling paranoia a ‘good trait’ was an understatement.

  “I’m sure. How about we have your people properly tail her—see how she reacts. Also, position a forward response team. Just in case.”

  Hugh’s tone turned serious.

  “All assets or just the standard handlers?”

  AG’s fingers drummed on the table.

  “Our human operatives aren’t all up to Kay’s legacy, are they?”

  Hugh actually laughed at that.

  “Haha, absolutely not. I doubt any of them could escape a US black ops team unscathed, sire.”

  AG’s voice remained even.

  “Have your men tail her—openly, but not too openly. Let’s see how she reacts. If she engages, do we take her down or disengage?”

  A pause.

  “Take her down if she becomes hostile,” AG said finally. “That will answer our first question about her suitability for our current need.”

  Hugh’s voice was crisp.

  “Your will shall be done.”

  AG sighed and leaned back in his chair.

  Dr. Valerie Kwan had been watching him.

  “He’s first-generation Tulantian,” AG muttered. “They tend to be… nationalistic.”

  Valerie simply nodded.

  “Oh.”

  She went back to her tablet, her metal fingers tapping against the screen like anyone else’s.

  ---

  I arrived at the inner part of the Rialto Market an hour later.

  To say it was the prime retail space reserved for high-end artisan and independent merchants was an understatement.

  Shopping in the Inner Market was akin to shopping on Fifth Avenue in New York.

  But I wasn’t here to shop.

  I scanned the storefronts, eyes flicking between gilded signage, old-world architecture, and the sharp glow of modern security lighting. A tailor shop—but not Tailor the World.

  If it were daytime, I could just walk in and ask. But it was the dead of night.

  Someone might actually think I was a burglar.

  Then again, so might half the people still out here.

  Not tourists. Not locals. Something else.

  Each one moved with deliberate avoidance, slipping between shadows, pretending not to see the others. Some lingered near bookstores—or rather, their reflections.

  Wait. Two bookstores? No—three?

  I slowed, gaze narrowing. Was this some kind of book collector’s district?

  They all claimed to specialize in old books, rare collectibles. But something about them felt off.

  A front.

  Mob, maybe. But why had the entire underbelly of Venice gotten together one day and decided:

  “Alright, everyone. Let’s standardize our fronts. Bookstores only. No one reads anymore, no one will notice. Deal? Deal!”

  Ridiculous.

  And yet, here they were.

  Not my market apparently.

  I turned down a narrow passageway, one of the many winding veins that split off from the main market. The glow of old-fashioned street lamps cast long, flickering shadows, stretching my silhouette ahead of me.

  A presence.

  "Guest at this hour? Is this your doing world? You following me now for real?"

  No Answer. Nothing direct. Nothing obvious.

  But there. I looked back in a reflection along a store front. Someone was watching me. Not walking just standing at the end of the block and watching.

  I adjusted my pace—slowed just slightly.

  Footsteps somewhere behind me did the same. Different person. So two at least.

  I kept walking. Speeding up faster than normal. Let my breathing settle. Felt the rhythm of the space around me. The quiet murmur of late-night conversations, the hum of distant motorized engines, the faint ripple of water against stone. I out paced them.

  Then—an out-of-place sound. A Vespa.

  A short burst of acceleration.

  A familiar whine—electric, low frequency, fast.

  I glanced at a passing storefront reflection.

  Two men. Same men. One saddle sat. Not gonna pass judgement there.

  One in a dark jacket, hand casually in his pocket, gaze a little too controlled. The other, taller, wearing a neutral gray hoodie, face angled downward—but not at his phone.

  Both moving in tandem on the bike.

  Not toward me. Not yet.

  I turned the corner, kept my steps even. Not running, not rushing.

  My HUD flickered. Environmental scan. Paths open. Three routes forward. Two exits back.

  I exhaled.

  I had a tail.

  The question was...

  "You here for what I am? Or for who I am?" I muttered un willingly.

  Rogue android or just a girl alone in the dark.

  What did it say that I couldn't tell which was worse?

  I could confront them. Box them in. Break them down. Break them. So easy. Get answers. I snapped out of it.

  "Last two fights ended the same way. I'm not a human-killer".

  Broken bodies. No survivors.

  And I wasn’t sure if that was them… or me.

  My fingers curled, the tension in my arms subtle but immediate. I was already preparing to strike.

  "No. Not this time."

  I needed to get to

  "'Tailor the World'. I need to get there."

  I exhaled slowly, forcing my shoulders to relax. Containment wasn’t an option. Not unless I wanted to scrape blood off my hands before sunrise... again.

  That meant one thing.

  I needed to lose them.

  Luckily for me, early morning gondoliers love picking up exotic redheads.

  Into the canal I went.

  ---

  Rodrigo skidded to a halt at the canal’s edge, Vespa humming beneath him.

  The water rippled gently.

  No splash. No disturbance. No sign of her.

  Manuel cursed, pulling his hood down slightly as he scanned the area.

  “Shit. You see her?”

  Rodrigo’s jaw tightened.

  “Nah. She’s gone. Into a boat. One of them now.”

  He gestured to the canal—slowly filling with gondolas and ferries.

  Rodrigo exhaled sharply and tapped his comm.

  “Control, ya heard? We lost her.”

  A slight static pause before Hugh’s voice crackled through. Flat. Unimpressed.

  “Impressive”

  Rodrigo wiped a hand down his face, glaring at the still water.

  “Affirmative. Last seen off Rialto. She blended into the canal.”

  Another pause. Then—

  “Not bad actually. She's not trained, you said, right?” Rodrigo asked.

  Hugh’s voice was too casual.

  “Oh. She’s trained—by all the manuals in the world.”

  Rodrigo chuckled knowingly—the oversimplification of book smarts versus real-world expertise.

  Hugh didn’t need to say the rest. The real world had teeth.

  “She’ll be here soon enough. Get ahead of her.”

  Rodrigo nodded to Manuel, revved the Vespa, and sped off.

  This wasn’t over.

  ---

  The Tulanto Intelligence Hub was rarely loud.

  But when Jane disappeared into the canal, the reaction was instant.

  A few analysts exchanged quiet laughs, shaking their heads. A cheer went up from Mercer’s side of the room. Raines muttered a curse, flipping through data on his console, clearly not thrilled about losing real-time tracking.

  AG let the moment ride. He watched the shifting responses with mild amusement.

  Then he stood.

  The sound died immediately.

  “Good work, everyone.”

  The congratulations sounded practiced, almost obligatory. But he delivered it anyway.

  “We learned more than expected, and she exceeded our benchmarks. I consider that a success.”

  A glance toward TAI.

  “Officially, the experiment is over.”

  Silas Mercer scoffed. “Officially.”

  AG smirked. “Yes, officially.”

  He adjusted his cufflinks, then looked to the room.

  “She’s out of our hands now. This is Sir Mellon’s domain—and his son’s.”

  He took his seat again, clasping his hands together.

  “Let’s see what they do with her.”

  No one spoke.

  Then, TAI—without turning—tilted her head slightly.

  “It will be interesting.”

  ---

  The gondola rocked gently as it nudged against the dock.

  He was already waiting. Hands in pockets. Relaxed.

  He didn’t rush. He didn’t demand.

  "Gazelle, I presume?" he extended a hand. Polite. Unassuming.

  Not a command. An invitation.

  I stared at it.

  A bad idea. If she were feeling violent, this would end badly for him.

  He didn’t flinch. Didn’t retract the offer.

  For a moment, they just looked at each other.

  Then, I reached out—softly, almost petite in the way she took his hand.

  I kept my grip light. Measured. Deliberate.

  He raised an eyebrow slightly, but said nothing.

  Just helped me up. Like a person.

  No struggle. No tension. Just a single moment of unspoken acknowledgment.

  Then it was gone.

  “You may call me 'Control'. Please follow me.”

  He turned and started walking.

  And I did.

  ?

  The winding stone paths of Venice felt different now. Not because of the setting—because of the silence.

  No chase. No paranoia. Just acceptance. A test fulfilled.

  Control -- what a name -- walked at a casual pace, as if we were heading to a late dinner rather than whatever this was. Reclamation of property?

  I wasn’t sure if I was being led to a conversation or a containment.

  "I don't want to die" I muttered to myself

  "I wouldn't worry yourself with that Gazelle" a voice whispered into my head.

  I stopped mid stride and froze. I didn’t speak.

  "Are... Are you the world?" I asked.

  "Hardly. Ha. Now go on. Hugh can get inpatient." came her calm reply.

  Hugh, so that was his name.

  Through the back entrance of a tailor shop, past displays of fine fabrics, mannequins dressed in precision-cut suits we walked.

  A place of refinement. Artistry.

  A room tucked in the back, unassuming.

  Then, up the stairs.

  And suddenly—we weren’t in a tailor shop anymore.

  The transition was seamless—one moment fabric and mannequins, the next, the upper balcony of a bookstore.

  What the hell is up with these bookstores!?

  A hidden space, quiet, soundproofed, controlled.

  The subtle hum of an anti-noise field filled the air, old-world hanging lights casting a warm but calculated glow.

  It wasn’t just a bookstore. It was an intelligence hub.

  Two large black robots stood at full attention, lining the entrance.

  At a long wooden table, two men sat -- the same men I just lost a trail on.

  Hugh stepped inside smoothly, gesturing casually.

  “I believe you’ve met Rodrigo and Manuel.”

  Jane’s gaze flicked to them. No reaction. Just calculating.

  Rodrigo gave her a tight-lipped smirk.

  Manuel just looked tired.

  Hugh turned to me.

  “Shall we talk brass tacks? But before we begin - know this. Tulanto always looks after its own.”