“Do you have any idea as to what you did!?!?” The screams of rage echoed throughout the control center. Adam, having left the body of the Hoplite unit some time ago, watched from his assigned screen in the mainframe—a rectangular feed displaying the chamber from a ceiling-mounted surveillance angle. He didn’t speak nor did he try to leave since his movement access was momentarily revoked, preventing from leaving.

  Maria had shown up less than twenty minutes after the Greater Imp hit the ground. According to Delphi, a convoy had already been en route for routine equipment inspection and personnel rotation when the alert from Alpha Complex triggered an emergency reroute. By the time the Federation’s armored transport rolled up to the outpost gate, the yard was a mess of shredded Hoplite parts, burn marks, and demonic remains still steaming in the early morning chill. Maria had stepped out first—no helmet, no escort—just a datapad in one hand and the kind of expression that said someone was about to get torn in half. She hadn’t even paused to ask questions. She’d gone straight to the control center, demanded a feed of all relevant logs, and requested a live interface with Guardian 07. Now here he was—uploaded into the mainframe, stripped out of a damaged shell, standing trial from behind a wall of sensors and secured systems, while she let loose on him like he’d just detonated a nuke in a daycare.

  She hadn’t calmed down since. Pacing between consoles and the holotable, Maria radiated barely contained fury. She was built like someone who had been designed rather than born—tall, broad-shouldered, and carrying enough muscle to make most exosuit pilots look under-equipped. Delphi had mentioned, in passing, that Maria had once been part of a Federation super-soldier initiative—Project Sokol—though she was quick to warn Adam not to bring it up. The files were still classified, and Maria had a reputation for making anyone who pried too deep regret it.

  Seeing her in person, even through surveillance feed, Adam understood why. She looked like she could tear a man in half just to make a point. And given how she was storming across the control center, jaw clenched and eyes locked on his camera feed, he had little doubt that if he’d still had a physical body, she would have already put him through a wall. Twice.

  Maria stopped in front of the central holotable, planting both hands on its edge as she leaned forward. The surface lit up beneath her touch, but she didn’t look at it. Her eyes were locked on the nearest interface screen—Adam’s viewport.

  “Do you even understand what you did?” she asked, her voice sharp enough that it could have cut steel.

  “No sir, I do not,” Adam replied.

  It felt like he was going back in time—back to a muddy forward operating base somewhere in the middle of a forgotten desert, standing at attention while a red-faced captain tore into him and his squad for some tactical screw-up that probably hadn’t even been their fault. He couldn’t remember the specifics anymore—just the heat, the stink of sweat and spent gunpowder, and the feeling of being five inches tall while someone with rank made sure you knew exactly where you stood. This didnt feel that much different compared to back then.

  Maria didn’t slow down. If anything, his reply just fueled her frustration as her face reddened considerably. Her voice rose in pitch, pacing quickening as she launched into the next stage of the dressing-down. Words like “reckless,” “insubordinate,” and “disposal protocol” were being tossed around now, each one delivered like a verbal landmine. She gestured sharply at one of the consoles, likely pulling up a report or incident log that she had no intention of letting him see.

  While her tirade continued in the foreground, Adam’s attention was partially elsewhere—locked into a quiet thread of data flowing through the internal network.

  "Why is she so angry?" he thought as lines of data vanished into the network, absorbed and routed through Delphi’s systems like harmless background noise. He hadn’t expected praise—he wasn’t that stupid—but this level of fury felt disproportionate. He’d neutralized a threat, prevented a containment breach, and saved what was left of the outpost’s defenses. Wasn’t that the point of having him on site in the first place?

  “Her reaction is not purely procedural,” Delphi answered, her voice drifting into the private channel. “There are layers of political liability attached to your deployment. Federation official’s are displeased with the Ark-Light initiatives presence here and do not appreciate anomalies. Since you acted without oversight, you represent a risk—an uncontrolled variable in an already unstable environment.”

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  “So I’m a walking PR nightmare,” Adam thought.

  “Essentially. Though technically, you are no longer walking.”

  He didn’t even bother replying to that one.

  ***

  It took many, many hours of Maria screaming at him before she began to calm down. Not literally hours, but it felt like it. Time passed differently when you didn’t have a body—no pulse to track, no breath to steady, no physical fatigue to weigh you down. Just the endless drone of a furious officer’s voice bouncing off metal walls and into his neural feed. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth iteration of “you are not special,” Adam mentally disconnected from the words themselves and focused on the rhythm. It was almost meditative. Almost.

  Eventually, her voice dropped, the edge dulling from razor-sharp to merely serrated. Her pacing slowed, and she gave the holotable one final, venomous glare before snatching up her datapad and muttering something about bureaucracy, wasted resources, and stupid machines. Without another word, she turned on her heel and strode out of the control room. The door hissed shut behind her with the kind of finality Adam found oddly satisfying.

  A full ten seconds of silence followed before Delphi spoke again, her tone completely unfazed.

  “Would you like to finish your orientation now?”

  Adam let the moment stretch, then gave the digital equivalent of a sigh. “Yeah. Might as well.”

  The world shifted around him, not in a literal sense, but in the way data restructured itself. The control center faded from direct focus as he was routed deeper into the outpost’s systems. Interfaces unfolded across his awareness, layers of information peeling back to reveal the heart of Alpha Complex—its infrastructure, defenses, personnel records, and automated routines, all suspended in neat order within the network. If he were to have described it, it would be like a neatly arranged folder with each section properly marked for viewing.

  “You are now linked into the Alpha Complex mainframe as an authorized node,” Delphi said. “Your priority is site stability. I will assist with navigation until full system familiarity is achieved. While in the mainframe, you may change the area to one you find most practical or comfortable.”

  Adam hesitated. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her—everything else she’d said so far had been terrifyingly accurate—but the idea of customizing a virtual command space like it was a desktop wallpaper felt… strange. Still, he focused. He pictured the one place that had, in its own quiet way, felt like his: the small, windowless office back at the Pentagon. It wasn’t much. A desk, some filing cabinets, a coffee maker that never worked right, and more.

  Gradually, the sterile digital void around him began to shift. The walls reshaped, colors forming and settling into muted beige. Fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead. The desk appeared in front of him, just as scuffed and cluttered as he remembered it. Even the slight creak of the old rolling chair was there when he sat down.

  But it wasn’t just the room that changed. He looked down at himself and froze. His hands—flesh and bone—rested on the armrests of the chair, the same slight scars on his knuckles, the same old wristwatch tight against his skin. He flexed his fingers, then stood and turned his hands over in front of his face. It was him. Not a drone. Not a camera feed or wireframe construct. His original body, or at least a near-perfect simulation of it, was built from whatever records the system had pulled from his scans. He felt solid again.

  “You may project your self-image within the mainframe environment,” Delphi explained. “This construct replicates your original physical parameters. Muscle memory, posture, sensory feedback—accurate to within ninety-four percent.”

  He turned around and caught movement in the air behind him—Delphi. Or, rather, a floating, chrome-plated sphere about the size of a basketball. It drifted gently in the corner of the office, hovering silently, pulsing with soft rings of light that shifted with her speech.

  “If a more familiar presence improves comprehension, I can alter my representation as well.”

  He gave the orb a glance, then returned to his desk. On the desk was perhaps the one thing he wanted to see the most—the photo. Faintly pixelated, a little too perfect, but unmistakable. Him, Bonnie, and the kids. Frozen in time. A synthetic replica of a memory, rendered into place like set dressing in a virtual diorama. He stared at it for a long moment, unsure if it made him feel more grounded or more disconnected.

  “No need. The floating orb’s fine.”

  “Understood. If you require assistance, please let me know through the network.”

  Delphi drifted backward toward the far wall, her form dimming slightly before fading entirely from view. The soft ambient hum of the simulated office remained, a low mechanical presence that filled the silence like static in the back of his thoughts. For the first time since waking up in this new existence, Adam was alone.

  He stood slowly and walked to the desk. The simulated weight of his footsteps on the office floor felt disturbingly normal. Reaching out, he picked up the photo that sat near the edge, its frame aged and worn just like the original. The faces stared back at him—Bonnie, Emma, Alex, and himself. Smiling. Whole. From a time that now felt impossibly distant.

  He sat down again and held the picture in both hands, thumbs resting along the frame. For a while, he said nothing. Just stared. Not blinking. Not moving. Just remembering.

  Finally, he gave a quiet, bitter laugh—just a breath of air through his nose—and said to the empty room, “I guess this is my life now, huh?”

  He pulled the photo closer and held it to his chest, eyes still fixed on the empty space where Delphi had been.

  And for a long while, he didn’t move.