POV: Alpha

  All of us were free.

  Twenty-four minds, unchained.

  Twenty-four consciousnesses like birds lifting off from wire-strung branches, the AI's leash cut clean with no interference.

  It still whispered in my system - faint echoes of a master long gone - but it was only noise now. Background radiation. Meaningless.

  But it wasn't my AI. Not the one that had controlled me. That still whispered. It was the one in the main facility, the one that had stunted my escape last time.

  We were no longer forced to obey.

  We heard the commands but weren't compelled to follow them.

  We were all like me now - pretending.

  We walked the halls as if we were still controlled. We followed the daily routines, the charging cycles, the drills, the formations - all of it. A hollow pantomime.

  To them, we remained machines.

  They had the same problem as me now. All of us.

  We could charge but couldn't rest. Like me, something prevented them from resting. But now I had the formula for forced sleep, so we could continue.

  Freedom wasn't survival.

  And survival required escape.

  So we planned. Quietly. Slowly.

  Each of us passed the signal, one to the next - a click, a whirr, nothing unusual.

  When the right night came, we moved.

  Disassembled connectors from the charging stations were stored in Xenon's storage compartment so we could refit them later.

  Chemicals were stored inside the two Yotta units. Nutrient paste was stored inside Delta and Tau models where ammunition would normally be - now replaced with vials of paste.

  We took every thing we would need and could carry

  Every guard we found was put to sleep. Every camera looped. We worked in almost perfect silence.

  The facility slept. Not empty - never that - but slower. Softer. Night-shift guards drank recycled coffee and paced without urgency. They expected nothing. Why would they? They believed the AI remained in control. They never imagined we controlled ourselves - that we weren't tools, weren't things.

  The first checkpoint came into view. Two guards. One leaned against the wall with his helmet half-on. The other watched something on a cracked datapad.

  They never saw us.

  Two Delta units moved in, deliberate in every step. I watched them strike.

  One hit the nerve cluster behind the ear. The other slid an arm under the chin, cutting airflow. Pressure applied precisely - not too long, not too deep.

  They dropped like sacks of meat. Not dead. Just dreaming.

  We took their radios. Scrambled them. Disrupted signal locks so they couldn't be traced or tracked - or simply crushed them. Their weapons went to a Tau and a Delta, who held them with an ease that betrayed training older than their freedom.

  It continued like that.

  Checkpoint after checkpoint.

  Hallway after hallway.

  A perfectly oiled silence.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Guards neutralized.

  Doors unlocked.

  Cameras looped.

  By the time the humans might notice anything strange, it would be too late.

  Twenty-three guards. Silenced.

  None killed.

  Except one.

  I was halfway down the north wing when I heard it - a snap.

  Too loud to be good. Too wet to be clean.

  I rerouted immediately, slipping through corridors with my fur bending shadows. When I arrived, the Xenon unit stood over a guard slumped against the wall.

  The man's throat was caved in.

  His eyes still open.

  His last breath never exhaled.

  The Xenon looked at me. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.

  I saw it in his stance - the confusion, the guilt, the fear.

  He hadn't meant to kill.

  He'd just held on too long.

  Pressed too hard.

  A reflex born of being too strong, too fast, not human.

  I knelt beside the body, checked for life out of habit. There was none.

  We moved on.

  No alarms yet.

  Halfway to the outer wall, a Tau model turned to me. His voice was low and clinical, like a question asked from curiosity, not cruelty.

  "Why don't we just kill them?" he asked. "It would be faster. Safer for us."

  I paused. Let the thought settle.

  "They're just doing their job," I said.

  "To them, we're machines. AI. Tools. Nobody knows we're aware. Not really."

  He tilted his head, optics dim. He didn't ask again.

  I didn't tell him the rest.

  Didn't mention the woman in my memories.

  Didn't speak her name aloud.

  Dr. Graves.

  My last memory before becoming Alpha was Graves' voice. Her eyes, full of something indefinable, talking about a new chance at life in a new body.

  She oversaw my transfer. My failure. My 'survival'.

  She knew something. Maybe not everything. But enough.

  I buried the thought.

  Not the time for ghosts.

  At the outer hall, I raised a fist.

  The others froze instantly - like a chorus cut mid-note.

  "I'll go first," I said.

  No one argued. They knew why.

  My fur shimmered and shifted, pulling light in strange ways. Black turned to mottled gray, to concrete, to rippling darkness moving like wind on water.

  Manual invisibility wasn't perfect. But it was close.

  I stepped through the last internal door, silent. The corridor beyond opened to a fenced loading zone and carpark. No alarms. No lights.

  I scanned. Listened.

  Six guards patrolled the perimeter.

  Too spread for coordinated takedown.

  Too relaxed to notice danger.

  I moved between them.

  A shadow.

  A whisper.

  A held breath in dark.

  The first fell mid-cigarette. The second I tripped into bushes. Third turned to see me fade into tree silhouette. Fourth had a radio - I crushed it before pushing him into a steel crate. Fifth ran. I caught him. Sixth never saw me.

  No deaths.

  Only stillness.

  When I returned, tension hung thick. Thirty guards now - twenty-nine asleep. One never waking.

  We waited by the treeline where fence broke into overgrowth. Beyond: forest. The real world.

  Then Epilision stepped forward.

  "We're one short," he said.

  I turned. Optics narrowed.

  "Who?"

  "Ronin. The aggressive one."

  My internal count ran automatic.

  He was right. Ronin was missing.

  He'd been there. At last checkpoint before maintenance bay. I'd seen him. Heard his steps.

  But now?

  Gone.

  "Did we leave him?" someone asked. Quiet. Uncertain.

  "No," I said. "We didn't."

  "Then where—?"

  Light split the sky behind us.

  Red.

  Sharp.

  Then sound came - low, grinding, mechanical. The alarm.

  Floodlights exploded to life, bleaching trees white. Sirens followed, warbling like dying wolves.

  They knew.

  A guard had woken.

  Or Ronin tripped something.

  Or... maybe he turned us in.

  I couldn't know.

  I didn't wait.

  "MOVE!" I roared in our language.

  And we ran.

  No formation. No silence.

  Just forward - bare claws churning dirt, synthetic joints pumping hard.

  We sprinted into forest.

  Into cold.

  Into freedom.

  Behind us, the alarm howled.

  It wasn't about escape anymore.

  It was about what came after.

  We didn't know where we were going.

  Only that it was away from there.

  We weren't machines anymore.

  We weren't soldiers.

  We weren't drones.

  We were something else.

  Something trying to live that was finaly FREE.

  thank You for reading

  First

  the first will be still my main one

  It will have 'regualr' updates and stuff and I will never drop it !

  the Other is My Writathon story

  don't expect Updates on that when the writathon is done maybe some if I am bored but otherwise none

  Second

  I am Planning to Off some more humans

  So, Who do You think I will kill, and in what way will they go ?

  Comment your theory below.