“You say that you’re called... Eva?” the intimidating Ceno frowned, raising his sole surviving eyebrow. Eva nodded silently. The room seemed charged with a stifling sort of tension, stealing away her voice.

Abruptly Ceno commanded, “Tell us your story. Were you involved with the Cyber Initiative? How old were you when you were digitized? And why are you here? Whose side are you on?”

“W-what?” Eva stammered, confused. Whose side are you on? What kind of a question was that? She had no idea there were sides to choose from in the first place.

“Tell us about yourself,” the floating girl, Zvezda, spoke. Her voice was dreamy, and her eyes were unfocused, gazing off into a reality only she could see.

Eva frowned. She didn’t want to tell these unfriendly strangers her life story, but she feared what might happen if she didn’t comply. “Well, uh, I was digitized when I was three or four. I was… loaned to the Cyber Initiative for a few months. It wasn’t my choice. My parents told me later that the Initiative were looking for young children to use as human test subjects, because they aren’t quite as big and complex as adults. It made the digitalization process easier or something. A-all I can remember is being held down in a chair with this… this machine towering over me... I don’t actually remember what my first impression of cyberspace was like—”

“I know all about the testing,” Ceno interrupted. “We’ve been through it, obviously.”

“Right, I know.” Eva felt oddly embarrassed. She cleared her throat and continued. “Well, afterward, we tried to resume our normal lives, as if nothing ever happened, but then my hair started falling out, and… strange things started happening to me. My body was… malfunctioning. The people back at the facility think something went wrong when they pulled me back out of the cyber dimension, some glitch in the reconstruction process — my body didn’t entirely stop being digital. I developed these… abilities… When I pixelate, I have this strange connection to technology… I can interfere with it. The scientists called me a technopath. The Initiative came back and took me away again, after they found out about everything that was happening to me. My parents didn’t even try to stop them.”

Eva didn’t like this part of the story. “The whole rest of my childhood, I was just a damn lab rat,” she said. “Scientists did all these... tests on me. They were curious about how I work, like, how can my body be caught between digital and physical? How am I still alive and functioning? And… and they started trying to test my ‘potential applications.’ They thought my abilities could be useful for something.” Her voice was choked-off and numb, her eyes downcast. “Anyway, it all became too much for me. They tried to pretend they cared how I felt, but they were never going to let me go. Eventually I just… tried to escape. They… they weren’t too happy about that. I saw their true colors.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “But then a stranger saved me. He broke into the facility, made their security systems go crazy. He helped me escape, left me near the city. He told me to find the other Digitized… to find you. And now here we are.” 

Eva’s eyes shone. “I need to find him again. I have so many questions for him, and I never thanked him for helping me—”

“Alright,” Ceno cut her off. “I get the idea. Now let us tell you a bit about ourselves. We were all digitized when we were children, too. You have no idea how lucky you are, how mild your symptoms are.” His gaze shifted toward Iyanna. “Iyanna here was five when she was sent into cyberspace against her will. She was the very first human subject to be digitized, ever. It was almost impossible to bring her back out alive, and when they finally managed it, she came back like this – pixelated. Forever. In constant pain.”

Ceno turned to Zvezda, who was dreamily humming a song as she floated.

“Zvezda here? She wasn’t always called Zvezda. But she changed her name after her family disowned her due to her… abnormalities. She was digitized when she was three,” he said. “Something went wrong, and she developed strange abilities, levitation, harnessing electricity. She was kept in a research facility, much like you were.” His voice softened. “She isn’t mentally… here, most of the time. She exists in a dreamland. She couldn’t stand up for herself. She couldn’t escape the living hell she was subjected to day after day. She was exploited, treated like an object, and she’ll never be the same. On top of all that, of course, she’s stuck pixelating uncontrollably for the rest of her life, with no known cure.”

“What about you?” Eva asked, warily studying Ceno’s icy expression.

“I was the luckiest,” he said. “I was digitized five years ago, after the technology improved. Sometimes I’ll pixelate a little, but otherwise, I can just live my life as normal. But… when I was in cyberspace… I was ambushed by malware. My right eye was corrupted before they could pull me back out. I’m fine now, though.” His voice betrayed him. He wasn’t fine at all.

Eva examined his mechanical eye and unusual scars with curiosity. “So then—”

Ceno interrupted her yet again. “I wasn’t finished. The Cyber Initiative, they put our lives at risk, ruined our lives. And for what? Did they ever tell you why they’re doing what they’re doing?” He shook his head. “Those people want to… to colonize cyberspace. They think it would solve all the world’s problems. But so far, their attempts to send people there and back safely have been failures. You were a part of it, too, but you weren’t with us. You didn’t grow up with Zvezda and Iyanna, locked away for over a decade because the Initiative didn’t want the world to see what being digitized did to you. You’re like us, but you’re not one of us.”

Eva frowned. “Well, I was locked away for a decade, actually,” she muttered. “Maybe I was alone, but still… It's not like you were with them this whole time, either. Why would you say that I…” Her train of thought suddenly changed course, and she glanced up at Ceno questioningly. “Wait, what about the other one? The fourth Digitized? What happened to them? What's their story?”

Iyanna stiffened. Ones and zeros shot from her pores. Discomfort flitted briefly across Zvezda’s dreamy face. Ceno’s outline wavered slightly, betraying the barest hint of an uncontrollable, emotionally driven pixelation.

“I think you already know,” Ceno whispered, eyes narrowed. “I think you’re our enemy.”