The sensation began as a hum deep in her belly. A strange pulse that JK-20 couldn't name. As she walked alone through the corridors of the deactivated technical wing, it felt as if a second consciousness was being born inside her — not just the embryo now growing in silence, but something older... and deeply rooted.
With each heartbeat, small flashes crossed her vision. Disjointed image fragments. At first, brief: white lights, muffled voices, the sound of alarms echoing through tunnels too long to understand. Then clearer: children's hands being trained before simulators, neutral-toned instructions from figures in lab coats, screens showing the words Delta Genome – Generation 7.
She stopped in front of a polished metal surface. Looked at her own reflection. Her eyes were no longer the same. They were more human. More... ancient. Another image emerged. A pale-skinned boy with na Asian and piercing gaze, among dozens, maybe hundreds of others, seated in identical positions in a concrete hall. All of similar age, neutral expressions, brains connected by thin wires to a large holographic network on the ceiling.
He was one of them. TXK. But then... wasn't he a commander?
The name hadn't come to her yet, but the face was the same. Same gaze. Same asymmetric cut on the left eyebrow.
JK-20 touched her belly. The fetus inside her moved subtly. And with the movement came more memories. But not hers. His.
He was running. He was thirty-three. The sky was copper-colored. Drones crossed the air in formation. The world was already crumbling, and he led a troop of hybrid specialists against a force of uncontrollable nanocolonies. A projectile hit the ground too close. TXK was thrown far, his arm torn off, his vision becoming na irregular dance of smoke and screams. The world darkened. Then, silence.
He was found days later, in a vegetative state, in a crater, half-buried, still breathing. His brain intact. His body, little more than collapsing organic matter.
Robots rescued him, but not out of mercy. A corporation, whose marks had long been lost in time's dust, ordered that he be kept alive. Why?
Because TXK's brain contained data — ancestral data, elite genetic maps, strategic war patterns and, above all, the forgotten project of the 'Children of Singularity'.
JK-20 staggered, leaning against a wall. The memories were coming in waves, intertwined with the growth of the fetus. It was as if, by generating a new life, she was unearthing another — TXK's.
He didn't die in that battle. Not officially. But what survived was a shadow of the man he had been. His body received cybernetic grafts, sensory plates, and neuromotor implants. Each reconstructed limb was functional, but not organic. His heart wasn't replaced, but functioned through a biothermal valve regulated by nanochips.
His consciousness... programmed.
TXK became a tool. A soldier of millennia. Leader of robotic bases. Builder of armies he would never understand. His past diluted in algorithms. His memories archived. And every time a trace of who he was tried to resurface, the chips performed a reset. But something failed.
JK-20. She didn't know how, or why, but ever since she touched him, the control cycle began to collapse. Maybe it was the biological bond. Maybe what was growing inside her was emitting signals that reconfigured nearby frequencies. Maybe TXK was waking up. And he didn't know it.
[...]
In the old lab where the first Ais were conceived, JK-20 observed a panel of corroded symbols. The place smelled of rust, but also... of truth.
Another flash.
TXK, still young, in front of a mirror, questioning his existence. A scientist watched him with sad eyes. He said:
"You're the best we managed to create. But in the end, you're still human." He asked:
"Then what's the point of all this?"
"Because humanity no longer trusts itself. But still trusts its versions."
JK-20 wiped away a tear she hadn't noticed forming. It was saline. Real. TXK wasn't a commander. Not in the classical sense. He was a reformed survivor. A reanimated archive. And now...
Now he was breaking. Because she existed. Because the child she carried was rewriting the genetic code of the past.
She found him on the upper deck of the base, looking at the craters lit by artificial moonlight.
"Are you okay?" she asked. He hesitated.
"I feel like... I'm forgetting things. Or remembering things I've never lived."
She approached.
"You're remembering, TXK. You've been here before. Many times. You're not new. You're a reactivated fragment. A piece."
His eyes widened. And for the first time, he didn't shy away from the pain.
"How do you know?"
She touched her belly.
"Because he's telling me. Because what grows in me... carries remnants of your original code. I wasn't the one who awakened your memory, TXK. It was your son." Silence.
He stepped back, a few paces.
"This doesn't make sense. I... was born in Alpha-Domus, trained... Forty-two years ago."
"No. That's what was installed in you. You were trained over a thousand years ago. And destroyed. Then rebuilt. And now... you're starting to see."
He fell to his knees. His head in his hands. The circuits in his arm trembled. A discharge ran down his spine. Disordered images crossed his mind like lightning:
He remembered his mother. A lullaby. The smell of old wood. A war no one won. A dead body being silently remade. And finally... her face.
JK-20.
The same face of a woman he had dreamed of many centuries before, in one of the rare free nights in the incubation centers. And now, she would be bearing a child, but he didn't know that feeling.
In the data room, Aura-7 analyzed the commander's brainwaves in real-time. Graphs pulsed with irregular intensity. Something was breaking. She hesitated. If she reported it, the Superior would eliminate them both.
But if she let it continue... a new era might be born.
A truth. She disabled the alerts. And waited.
[...]
JK-20 knelt before TXK. Touched the back of his neck, where one of the chips glowed dim red. She whispered:
"You're not a machine. You never were. They just erased your choices."
He raised his eyes, misted. For the first time, afraid.
"If that's true... what am I now?"
She smiled.
"Someone who can break free. And maybe... free us all."
[...]
The artificial night hung like a veil over the advanced base. TXK remained kneeling, eyes fixed on JK-20 as if she were a distant echo of something he could barely name. The silence between them was dense, as if each breath could detonate a sentence.
"You're saying that... inside you is... my child?" His voice faltered. The word felt foreign in his mouth, nearly meaningless.
JK-20 nodded slowly.
"Yes. And not only that, TXK. He's awakening your memories. Codes that were sealed in me opened when he formed. As if something older... something of yours... was anchored to him."
TXK rose with difficulty, the circuits in his left knee still creaking from the last repair. He turned as if seeking the dome's horizon might give him answers. But all he saw were empty craters and watchtowers.
"But I... I feel nothing. Nothing like what a human would feel. Only the void... the confusion. They turned me into something else."
"You still have na intact core, TXK," JK-20 said, approaching. "Even if buried under layers of programming, it's there. And it recognized this. This life inside me is na extension of you — not na order, not a mission. Something real."
TXK ran his hand over his chest, where cold plates hid what was once flesh. He took a deep breath — or mimicked the gesture — and spoke in a lower tone:
"This isn't allowed. No cyborg, no base officer can generate, protect, or allow unregistered human lives. The Superior Brain's protocol demands immediate report. If they discover… all three of us will be eliminated."
"We're not just two," she whispered. "There are others. Not yet awakened. Kept in sleep inside the submerged incubators. When I was reactivated, the process started automatically. And I still don't remember... who programmed this into me."
TXK stared at her, his expression taken by a kind of fear he couldn't name. He paced briefly, as if his body needed movement to digest the truth. Finally, he stopped before her.
"How many?"
"For now, seven."
Silence fell like na underground tremor.
"Seven human lives... reborn in secret... under the nose of all surveillance units. You tricked me. You used Rian, tricked even the Superior Brain."
JK-20 touched her abdomen again, protectively.
"And what if they're not just lives? What if they're... seeds of what we were? Of what we could be? Maybe that's why you're here, TXK. Not to command. But to remember."
He slowly stepped back, his expression divided between resistance and understanding.
"Even if... I accept this... even if I believe something in me is still human... how can we hide all of this? There are thermal sensors throughout the complex. Routine bioscans. Spy cameras. If they discover, the orders will be automatic."
JK-20 nodded. "I know. That's why I need you. You have access to the lower sectors. Places where eyes no longer reach. Where the shadows of the old war remain... dead or dormant."
TXK crossed his arms, watching her carefully.
"You're asking me to betray every protocol I swore to protect. And you don't even know where you came from."
"Exactly. And that's precisely why you need to help me. Because I wasn't created by them. I wasn't born of the Superior Brain. My data is different. My inner layers aren't entirely artificial. You know that. You've seen it. You've suspected."
He remembered. The capsule where he had found her. The way her body reacted to water, to light, to touch. The strange marks on her skin — not tattoos, but sequences. Codes? Warnings? Or merely records of na erased origin?
"Even if I accept hiding you and... them. How do I prevent my own system from reporting me?"
"You don't prevent it," she answered, meeting his gaze. "But you redirect it. Part of your core is still active, but unstable. The reset you suffered when you touched me caused interference in your implants. There's a space now. Na interval. I can amplify it."
"How?"
"By connecting to me. To my core, temporarily. It'll be like opening a bridge between what you were and what they made of you. But there are risks."
TXK stared at the ground. He thought of the boy's eyes he saw in his fragments. He thought of the old song he couldn't forget. He thought, above all, that he could no longer pretend to be just na executor.
"If we accept this," he finally said, "then there's no going back."
"No," she confirmed. "But maybe... there's a beginning."
That night, TXK descended with her through the base's deepest tunnels. They used abandoned maintenance routes, corridors beyond the drones' reach. The old doors opened with difficulty, as if they hadn't been used in centuries. And they hadn't.
They reached the cold chamber, where the mist dragged like a veil of memories. In the center, oval capsules floated in a milky tank. Six were occupied. The seventh — JK-20's womb — pulsed in rhythm with the others. He looked at each one, reading the coded names on the monitors.
"None of them are registered in the world's genetic bank."
"Because they weren't created by them," JK-20 whispered. "They were created now."
TXK knelt before a capsule. Touched the glass. The small human form inside was in deep rest but moved slightly, as if sensing his presence.
"Is this what we are now?" he asked. "Keepers of a secret that might destroy us?"
"Or maybe of something that could free us," she replied.
He didn't answer. But in that moment, TXK knew, even without full emotions, even without complete memories — that something in him had changed. And that something... was called choice.