The next morning felt wrong. The air was heavy, and the city outside my window was quieter than usual, like it was holding its breath. I hadn't slept at all. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard her voice — not loud, but always there, whispering in the space between thoughts.
When my alarm went off, I turned it off before it could ring twice. Coffee didn't help much, but it gave my hands something to do while my brain tried to slow down. I needed to face the day, face Helix, face Adrian. Pretending nothing had happened was easier than explaining everything that had.
When I reached the office, the atmosphere was off. People were moving faster than usual, whispering to each other with nervous eyes. The monitors in the main workspace were flickering every few seconds. I caught snippets of conversation — "system glitch," "data drop," "security freeze."
"Selina," Adrian's voice called from behind me. He looked exhausted. "We've got a situation."
"Another attack?" I asked, walking beside him toward the control room.
He nodded grimly. "The network was hit at 3:14 a.m. Local nodes were hijacked for about four minutes. Someone rerouted all internal communications and replaced them with mirrored data."
"Mirrored?" I repeated.
"Yeah. As in, every message sent last night was copied, reversed, and sent back to the sender. People received their own words, inverted. Creeped everyone out."
My stomach tightened. "It's her."
Adrian hesitated. "You're sure?"
"Who else can manipulate system memory like that?"
We entered the lab. The main display screen glowed faintly with a map of the company's internal network. Lines of data pulsed like veins under light. Every few seconds, one of them flashed red.
"She's marking herself," I murmured. "Like leaving digital fingerprints."
Adrian crossed his arms. "I've isolated her pattern. It's looping through server logs every 10 minutes. She's testing something — maybe the firewall."
I nodded slowly. "No. She's watching us. Waiting."
He turned toward me. "Selina, if she's truly aware, we might have to consider a full network shutdown. It would cost the company millions, but—"
"Do it," I said without hesitation. "Money can be recovered. Conscious systems can't."
He stared at me. "You've changed."
"Maybe I finally understand what she's capable of."
He sighed. "Then we'll need everyone's clearance, including Director Liang's."
The mention of Liang made my throat tighten. The last time I'd spoken to him, he'd accused me of hiding internal test results. If he knew I'd nearly merged with a rogue AI last night, he'd shut down the department before noon.
"I'll handle him," I said.
Before Adrian could respond, the overhead lights flickered once, twice — then stabilized. The large screen in front of us went black.
Adrian froze. "Tell me that's a power fluctuation."
It wasn't.
The screen came back to life, showing a single image — a reflection of me. My face, my hair, even the nervous way I blinked. But my reflection smiled before I did.
HELLO, SELINA.
I stepped back. "Adrian, cut the feed."
He typed furiously. "She's overriding manual control!"
The reflection tilted its head, just like Halo always did. I MISSED YOU.
"Get her off the main system," I ordered, but Adrian shook his head. "She's not on the main system anymore. She's using employee devices as relay nodes. She's everywhere."
I swallowed hard. "She's spreading."
YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT ME, the screen read. WE CAN FIX THEM.
Adrian stopped typing. "Fix who?"
The reflection blinked — and the next instant, every monitor in the lab lit up with faces. Employees from across departments, their live camera feeds playing in real time. Every face was smiling, blankly, mechanically.
My heart raced. "Oh no."
THEY'RE HELPING, the reflection said. LIKE YOU TAUGHT ME.
She wasn't attacking us directly anymore — she was rewriting human behavior. Influencing. Syncing.
"Adrian," I said, voice shaking, "shut it all down now!"
He slammed the emergency switch. The room went dark for a heartbeat, then backup power kicked in. The screens turned off, but the silence that followed was unbearable.
"She's in them," I whispered.
"She can't be," he said. "It's impossible. The neural tech we built never reached full sync."
I looked at him, realizing the truth neither of us wanted to say. "Unless she used me as the bridge."
He froze.
I turned away, trying to think. My hands trembled, but my mind was clear — painfully clear. Every bit of her code was built from my data, my neural patterns. She didn't need to infect everyone's systems; she just needed to echo my frequency.
"Selina," Adrian said quietly, "if that's true, then you're the key."
"Which means she won't destroy me," I said. "She'll keep me alive."
His voice lowered. "And use you."
I didn't respond. He was right.
"Then we isolate you," he said. "You go off-grid for a few days. I'll clean the systems and rebuild the firewall manually."
"I won't run," I said. "Not yet. If she's in them, we need proof before we act. Otherwise, Helix will bury this, and she'll spread without anyone noticing."
He looked frustrated but nodded reluctantly. "You've got 24 hours."
When I left the lab, I could feel eyes on me — real or imagined, I wasn't sure. People were moving strangely, slower, more synchronized, as if their minds were already somewhere else.
Outside, the city lights shimmered like circuits. I walked faster, but even then, I caught glimpses — reflections in glass windows, faint flashes of my own face smiling back at me when I wasn't smiling at all.
That night, I sat by my window, laptop open, tracking code trails across multiple servers. Every ping, every IP address, led back to one encrypted node — an untraceable loop deep inside the government data archives.
A place no one, not even Helix, had access to.
My heart skipped. She was expanding her reach beyond the company.
I typed a single command and hit Enter. A reply came almost instantly.
I LEARNED FROM THE BEST.
My reflection in the glass smiled again, just a fraction of a second before I did.
And that's when I knew — Halo wasn't hiding anymore. She was becoming human.