“You see?” it rasped, its voice suddenly harsh and jagged. “This place is a prison. You can’t save them. They’re already gone.”
Rosa stood her ground, muscles tensed, but Selina was moving. “No, we don’t have time for this!” she said. “Let’s go.”
Rosa’s gaze flicked between the rat and the interconnected monkeys.
A flash of green light flared from the pod where Gum’s body rested, his expression absent, unnaturally still. A memory flashed: the glass panel at Paignton, fogged with breath and fingerprints. Rosa’s hand trembled as she reached out, her fingers skimming the slick, cold container. The cable system vibrated under her touch, sending a ripple through the network.
The rat hopped onto the central interface, its tail curling as it settled. It stared at them with unblinking, glassy eyes.
“The cells can’t just be unplugged,” it said. “Numier and Fane made sure of that. Tear them out now, and you don’t just break LumiGard - you break the monkeys too.”
It sniffed the air, almost wistfully.
“Not that I plan to let you meddle. LumiGard is my way out. My stairway to ‘heaven’. I’m not giving that up for you.”
Its whiskers twitched.
“Run. Like your friend keeps saying. It’s your last good idea.”
Rosa shook her head, her voice hardening. “You’re wrong. We saw Gum - right here. Just days ago. Awake. Not sunk in any prison tank. He gave me a book with a message. Orin Fane was there.”
The rat’s whiskers twitched, and for a moment, its eyes gleamed with something close to satisfaction. “Ah. An interview,” it murmured. “Fane always had a flair for dramatic gestures. Reviving that macaque, even briefly… a risk. But he deemed you worth it.” The words hung, heavy. “Did it help?”
"They don't belong here," Rosa murmured, swallowing the lump in her throat. "This isn't right."
“Rosa!” Selina’s voice cracked. “This is a trap. We need to leave. Now.” She didn’t wait for Rosa to respond, moving in to grab her wrist, jerking her away from the pod.
“Selina…” Rosa started, her voice distant, caught between the plight of LumiGard and her own helplessness.
“No,” Selina snapped, fierce, unyielding. “We are not staying here for this.” She yanked harder, fingers digging into Rosa’s wrist.
“Help us,” Rosa whispered, her hand instinctively moving to her headset. But Rowan was no longer visible.
“Too late!” the rat spat, shrinking back as a large screen on the wall lit up. A string of letters tripped out, typing: "<
“Numier,” it hissed, arching its back. “Do you see now?”
Rosa blinked. “See what?”
“The short-sightedness. They craved a new intelligence. Instead, they created prisons. And you’re trapped in one.”
Rosa turned, the orange light of the nexus pulsed faster, more erratic with every passing second. Her mind raced. What could she hope to achieve?
A high-pitched whine like bent circuitry filled the air, then abruptly stopped. The chamber plunged into silence - a silence waiting.
Selina’s voice cut through it. “Rosa. Now!”
But Rosa was staring at an oval device near Gum’s pod - a device she hadn’t noticed until now, half-obscured by cabling and metal rigging. Unlike the cold sheen of the rest of the lab, this thing pulsed with a slick, almost organic texture. She froze.
“That’s…” Rosa whispered, her voice low, almost reverent. “The 84LDY unit.”
Selina groaned at Rosa’s resistance. “What?”
“That’s Jonas’s. Stolen! It’s feeding the monkey network. Is that how they’re running LumiGard?”
Selina took a step back, eyes darting toward the exit. “We really need to…”
And then…
From the flatbed of a core unit aside the 84LDY, a turquoise filament ignited, tracing a serpentine circuit across its frame. Cool, spectral light spilled into the room, chasing shadows across the floor. One by one, amber LEDs blinked to life - steady, rhythmic, echoing those on the cables linking the spines of the macaques.
Something began to emerge.
Not a projection. Not like Rowan’s spectral glow. This thing was digital - yet it was becoming. Tiny repeating curves - endless little S’s - unfurled like code turning physical, extruding synthetic mass thread by thread, as if woven straight from the system’s own circuitry. Glowing orange energy pulsed through unspooling filaments as they looped and intertwined, forming the hollow scaffold of a cranium: crown, sockets, jawline. Over the head, vine-like threads clung and thickened, tracing the form like ivy creeping over forgotten stone.
Caught in the push-pull of instinct, Selina recoiled: Get out. Drag Rosa. Don’t look back.
But she was looking.
And she couldn’t stop.
A figure was forming. Latticed with living tendrils, like the nervous system of some forgotten demigod. Light pulsed through it like blood, like breath - and along its limbs, spectral petals unfurled and withered in rapid succession, wavering between beauty and decay.
Selina pressed a hand to her mouth. “Rosa.”
But Rosa didn’t move.
Her headset flickered. And lit up.
She staggered. Text streamed across her vision, not system diagnostics or error codes - this was different.
[seebus=lumen?]
[textmode // err0: bloom]
<< KEYWORD: recall >>
<< ACTIVATE: verse.stream >>
Then, abruptly:
> “He doth bestride the narrow world / Like a colossus, and we petty men / Walk under his huge legs…”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
And the words kept changing, reforming, cycling:
Then a single word streaked bold across Rosa’s headset, clear among the mess of streaming glyphs and sputtering fragments:
MASS
The rest was indecipherable - spirals of repeated S’s, infinity mobius symbols, elongated strings of broken vowels, ghost lines of bardic quotation degraded into nonsense. But that one word - MASS - was clean. Solid. Like it had weight.
The monkeys stirred.
Not physically, not all at once - but Rosa could feel them shifting. Their eyes opened, flicked toward her.
In her headset, the system blinked:
> “Massssssssseeeeebbbbbuuuuuuussss…”
“Virtuality seeking anchor. Mass determined, mass provided.”
The rat hissed from under a pod array. “No! Don't wake the monkeys!”
One of the macaques twitched its arm. The movement was awkward, spasmodic - but unmistakably pointed. It tapped the glass of its pod. Once. Then again. And again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Rosa’s visor interpreted the rhythm.
> “S…S…S…”
Then:
> “Seebus = signal.”
“Mass = permission.”
“Liberant = entry.”
“From verse to flesh.”
Then it broke down into a flood of letters.
ffvvvvvvvpppsssggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg…
Rosa gasped. “They're trying to tell me how he’s doing it. How virtuals become.”
And as she spoke, the figure coalescing at the 84LDY device stood taller - thicker, heavier. A soft, thump echoed as its foot made contact with the floor.
It had weight now. Mass.
But Rosa wouldn’t move. Her body shook with something close to revelation, her gaze locked on the thing now fully emerged.
Art Numier.
It was him. His Infinity NexUs avatar made real. Liberant.
Its face bent and twisted into something nearly human. Smooth mesh and pulsing veins of light converged into a simulacrum - eyes like the inside of shattered opal, seeing too many things at once. Around him, tiny insectile drones began to drift in eerie concentric spirals, clicking into whirring configurations.
Selina edged backward, dragging Rosa with her. “We can’t fight this.” But even as she pulled, she watched, transfixed by the impossible thing standing before them - an impossible avatar dreaming itself awake.
For a heartbeat, Rosa thought he might be whole.
Then he smiled - and the illusion fractured.
His mouth stretched too wide, teeth flickering in nested loops, gums appearing and vanishing. His left eye spun like a broken compass, pulling downward. A thousand tiny sigils wormed across his cheek like circuitry evolving in real time.
“I am Numier,” it said. “Not the one you knew. The one designed to replace myself.”
The rat crept forward, moving under a nearby console, hackles up. “No! No no you idiot - you weren’t ready! You’re not…”
“Complete?” The avatar tilted its fractured head. “Wholeness was never the point.”
A vast shudder reverberated through the chamber as the Numier liberant lunged. His body jerked forward, legs unsteady, moving like a broken machine - not quite able to hold itself upright, but determined to reach out. A trembling hand stretched toward Rosa and Selina, fingers twisting unnaturally as they scraped through the air.
He wasn’t whole. His body fragmented as it moved, sections crumbling and flaking, on the verge of tearing apart.
The weight of his movement was terrifying, an unnatural, uncoordinated force. But it was clear - this thing, whatever it was, could barely maintain its shape. His joints crackled with each hesitant step, the lights of his mesh skin blinking in and out like a stuttering signal. The tiny drones dropping from the air like dead flies.
His voice - broken, jagged - crashed through the air. “This... defect...” He growled, his words splintering. "Why... can't... just... leave me like this!”
The rat scampered forward, stretching up on hind legs and hissed, “You're defective like all the rest!”
The thing’s rage and frustration gushed. "All the others... were nothing…”
Rosa and Selina fell back to the wall of the chamber, caught in the grip of terror. Selina’s eyes were circles, her body instinctively shuddering, yet her gaze locked on Numier’s erratic, jerking movements. "It’s broken," she hissed, barely containing her panic.
But Numier’s growl was feral, a cacophony of sound that was part voice, part interference, part destruction. "I will... make it…!" His distorted form twisted violently with each breath. He lurched again, reaching for them, fingers still struggling to adjust themselves mid-air.
The proximity of his dislocating form sent tremors through the room, every unsteady step a reminder of just how incomplete he was. Each movement was an attempt to maintain coherence, but it wasn’t working.
Rosa pressed against the wall, her heart pounding. She could feel the instability in the air, as if the entire LumiGard network was trembling beneath the strain of the fractured entity.
Selina twisted the electric prod in her hand, gathering courage.
Numier’s body surged forward again - harder this time - its hips snapping sideways with an audible pop as ligaments in its synthesised musculature strained against corrupted protocols. It wasn’t just unstable. It was in agony. And furious. Each step left behind fragments of itself - data, print, filament - sloughing off like diseased skin, dissolving into smoke that shimmered and coalesced into flickering, insectile subroutines.
It growled.
A sound like metal dragged across bone.
The rat shrieked. It bolted across the floor, fur rippling, eyes wide with unnatural awareness. It stopped behind the failing liberant. “Waited! You should have waited!”
The macaques stirred in their tanks.
Not the peaceful twitching of dreams. Their eyes rolled. Their fingers clawed at the fluid around them. Their neural bands glowed red - pulsing with something that wasn’t meant for them.
“Enough!” the rat screeched. “You’re groping for substance before the story is written. Paignton, LumiGard, liberants - it's all too soon.”
From overhead, LumiGard’s voice dropped into the chamber.
A stuttering, overlapping chorus of its usual tones - kind, precise, soothing - now layered over something deeper, as if something else was climbing through it.
> “Subject integrity… compromised. Termination… no, no, adaptation in progress. Progress is beautiful. Beauty is unstable. Beauty is instability. Beauty is… ”
It broke off with a screech of binary.
Selina shoved Rosa behind her and raised the prod.
The macaques stirred again, spasming violently in their tanks as the chamber lights strobed with overloaded input. The avatar's broken mouth widened - unhinged - like a snake disgorging its own logic.
Selina moved on instinct.
She shoved Rosa behind her and raised the prod.
The thing lunged. Not walking now - dragging itself, its lower half fracturing completely, data ligaments dangling like torn muscle from a carcass. Its arms spun in impossible loops, trying to recompile even as they reached forward.
She screamed - and jammed the prod into its chest.
The contact lit the room.
For a moment, time stuttered. The prod discharged in a cascade of blue fire, arcing down Numier’s glitch-veined torso. His body convulsed, every filament bursting with corrupted code. Sparks jetted from his throat as he spasmed and crumpled, slamming into the floor with a sound like a collapsed glasshouse.
Then silence.
Until he began to crawl.
Even broken. Even ruptured. He dragged himself forward - his arms clawing the tiles, his voice glitching into an unbearable hiss:
“Let… me… finish… becoming…”
Selina’s hand trembled. The prod was spent.
Numier’s body seemed to split further, more unstable than ever, but the final, desperate lunge fell short.
The screens throughout the lab exploded into static, blinding the room with distorted light.
Rosa turned at the sound of doors hissing shut.
Selina spun toward the sound. “Rosa - he’s locking us in.”
“No… Just me,” she realised grimly. She pounded the wall. “Go! Get out! I’ll keep him distracted!”
Rosa’s throat tightened. “Selina…”
“GO!”
“Rosa!” Selina’s voice was frantic, her hands scrabbling against the door terminal, trying to find some way out. “You have to go! Now! I'll be okay… somehow.”
The Numier liberant writhed in the aftermath, malformed and furious, its shape stuttering as if reality itself couldn’t hold it steady.
Selina shook Rosa sharply. “Move, now!” she shouted, her voice torn with urgency.
Rosa staggered in shock, her mind reeling, her heart heavy with the weight of the monkeys’ suffering.
But Selina was not waiting. She dragged Rosa to the door with a frantic grip. "You'll think of something!" Her words were a flood of desperation. “Rosa, you’re the only one who can - go!”
Selina pushed, and in one seamless motion, Rosa's body passed through the door as though it were air. A sudden vertigo hit her, but she sank through it, instinctively knowing this was the only way.
Behind her, Selina’s voice cracked through the chaos: “Rosa, don’t you dare hesitate now! You're the only ho…” Her shout was swallowed by the growing dissonance of the lab, the pulsing lights intensifying as security operatives breached the opposite entrance.
The sight of Selina, wild-eyed, shouting after her, face a mix of fear and hope, made her stomach twist. How could she leave behind the chance to fix it all, leave the very core of her being wrapped up in the agony of the monkeys. But Selina was right, the sheer urgency in her voice - you’re the only hope - stopped her from going back in.
For a moment, she stood still, as though the very act of passing through the door had frozen her in time. A deep, aching emptiness gnawed at her chest.
You’re the only hope.
And just like that, Rosa was running, feeling the soft, strange current of the world around her shift. The gravity of her actions twisting her gut. She couldn’t turn back. Not now. Not when the world was unraveling so fast.