Artificial

11 | Jello

Reyna's the only one I don't have to tuck in that night and I'm reminded once again why I don't drink or indulge in revelry.

Illuminated by the soft blue light of the comms screen, I spin in Reyna's swivel chair, examining my nails as I wait for my downloads to complete. The progress bar crawls forward at a snail's pace, each pixel seeming to take hours to load. It's currently 5:45 in the morning, and despite my pounding head and heavy eyelids, I can't sleep. My fathers words replay in my head, contrasting with my earlier interaction with Elias.

I think back to how he looked at me in the club, the way his eyes roamed over my body, and an almost reverent look reflected in his expression. I think back to his visceral reaction when I had touched him. It's unfair, how someone so beautiful can be so evil. And Elias is beautiful, no matter how much I want to pretend he isn't. That only makes me hate him more.

By the time the others awaken, I have a full stack of papers and graphs covering the navigation table. Shelly pops a few hangover pills into her mouth, and Sadie brings over two steaming cups of coffee while I recount what transpired the night before. Reyna stands at the back, leaning against the dorm frame while she listens.

"So you're telling me, we have a creepy artificial intelligence tailing us?" Shelly looks like she's on the brink of hysteria. "And he was in our cameras?"

"That's not possible," Sadie says, moving to sit in one of the seats. "Sentient AI research is strictly prohibited. Plus, if there really was a rogue robot running round, don't you think we would have heard about it?"

"There's information about him publicly online," I say, pulling up the files I had found during my pod ride to Andromida. Except the files are gone, in fact, the entirety of the websites and databases I had pulled the information from were gone. Like they had never existed to begin with.

The only information that seems to be available is information about his company and ship. Is it possible Elias monitors and controls the internet's information flow? Sadie comes to the realization the same time I do, and her eyes go wide.

"I guess that would explain why no one snapped pictures of us carrying those vaults onto our ships." Or they had taken pictures, and Elias had just deleted them afterwards.

"That's some crazy witchcraft shit," Shelly says, coming in to join us at the table. "So what do we do now?"

"What we do," Reyna grinds out from behind us. "Is we eject the person that the crazy maniac is after. Before the said maniac kills all of us."

"And you said you tried to kill him?" Sadie begins rocking back and forth in her seat. "Holy shit, Mira."

"He's loaded though, right?" Shelly brings one of the papers to her face, examining the numbers carefully. "Then you're far from the first person who's tried to kill him. Plus he owns a bil-" Shelly's voice dies when she sees the number of zeros on the paper. "What I'm trying to say is that he must be a very busy man. Isn't it a little narcissistic to believe he's going to drop everything, just to chase you? He has an empire to run."

"Does that really matter right now?" Reyna hisses, wrings her hands in the air. "Is no one listening to me? Whatever is chasing us right now, is chasing her. Not us. What does this have to do with us at all?"

"Reyna." Shelly's voice slices through the room, cutting and harsh against her previously light tone. It's clear Reyna wants to say more, but she doesn't, turning on her heel and slamming the door on her way out.

Sadie sighs loudly, bringing her knees up to her chest. Even though I'm the topic of discourse, I can't help feeling as if I'm intruding on a long standing argument that goes beyond just Reyna's dislike of me.