The Colonists had just settled into a pleasant evening of watching movies and experimenting with digital tools. Even Yuli was relaxing, off in the corner, playing with her code visualizer. Mira and Aliyah laughed raucously, distracting the young programmer from her work. Arilus and Cay, meanwhile, were deep in conversation about a bug Cay had discovered in one of the vehicles he designed.

Then there was a knock at the door.

“That’s odd,” Arilus frowned slightly, turning away from Cay. “I wonder, is this another test?”

“Maybe it’s an AI with housewarming gifts,” Aliyah suggested dryly. “Want me to check?” Without waiting for an answer, the woman walked over to the door and lightly tapped it. It swung open quickly, revealing a young girl with messy red hair and an unnerving sharpness in her eyes.

There was a faint sizzle, and Aliyah abruptly fell to the ground, convulsing. The girl cackled and kicked her out of the way, darting into the house before anyone could react. She was quickly followed by three more strangers, all with weapons drawn. Their whooping and hollering drowned out the sound of the digital film playing on the wall of monitors.

“Oh my god!” Mira shrieked, cowering behind the couch.

“Dr. Shaw!” Cay screamed, dashing out of his seat to aid the now motionless woman. There was a loud bang, and he cried out in pain, curling up on the ground and grabbing his leg.

“Nobody move!” Aster commanded, aiming his gun at the collapsed Colonist. Leonela giggled, twirling around to fire a blast of electricity at the screens. They began to glitch, disrupting the image of a passionate kiss. 

Blake and Ruo stood by the door, ready to lash out with their axe and spiked bat at a moment’s notice. “All of you, hand over your weapons!” Blake shouted. “Toss them over here! Go on!”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to move!” one man hissed.

“Smartasses die first!” Blake responded, eyes flashing.

Hesitantly, the Colonists retrieved their weapons and threw them toward Blake and Ruo. “Look at all of you!” Blake laughed, shaking her head. “How’re your big brains gonna get you out of this one, huh?”

“Why the hell did you think you’d survive one night here?” Ruo called out. “We’re gonna have a great time in this nice big house!”

The Colonists glanced around the room, wide-eyed and distressed.

“Why are you doing this?” Mira cried out, balling up her fists. “Who are you?!”

“We’re the people you screwed over for science,” Leonela answered flatly. 

Aster fired at the nearest table, not trying to hit anyone in particular, just hoping the Colonists would flinch. They did not disappoint.

Amid all the panic and noise, Yuli noticed that Arilus seemed eerily calm. The sight of him quietly observing the situation simultaneously reassured and unsettled her. Did he have a plan?

“Hey...” Aster frowned, realizing that Arilus had failed to hand over his weapon. “You. Big guy. What’ve you got for us?”

The man sighed with resignation and slowly reached into his pocket... then abruptly ducked beneath the table.

“What, did he faint?” Aster frowned, lowering his gun slightly. Then a burst of bluish lightning crackled to life, skittering across the floor to knock the test subject off his feet. His head crashed into the back of the table he’d shot a hole through, knocking him out cold.

Arilus jumped to his feet, electrostaff in hand. A lattice-like pattern of hard light shielded him as he advanced toward the laughing girl, who erratically fired electric blasts in his direction. Her smile died when he reached her unharmed, knocking her to the ground with a blow from his staff. He continued to hit her while she was down, not stopping until she dropped the electrogun. The other Colonists winced at the violence. The girl couldn’t have been older than seventeen, and he was attacking mercilessly.

Blake bellowed an incoherent war-cry, charging forward as Arilus reared back to strike Leonela once more. He changed the direction of his attack as Blake approached, knocking her legs out from under her. She hit the ground hard. As she struggled to catch her breath, Arilus shocked her with the butt of his staff. The axe fell from her twitching hand. Ruo stood there, staring, stunned by how quickly Arilus had taken her friends down. The Colonist rose to his feet, aiming his staff at the woman. She turned and ran, but a burst of electricity caught her in the doorway, sending her crashing to the floor.

“Help me get them out of here, will you?” Arilus addressed a pair of stronger-looking Colonists. They nodded, too astonished to speak. As one of them grabbed Aster, Leonela began to crawl away, choking back sobs of pain. Yuli winced at the sight of her. If she weren’t so dangerous, the programmer would have been tempted to help her. Blake scrambled to her feet and bolted, yanking Ruo upright in the doorway and supporting her as she struggled to run. The woman’s axe lay on the floor, abandoned. Once Aster and Leonela were dragged out into the garden, Arilus shut the workshop’s only door and sighed. 

“Quick! Her heart stopped!” Mira’s panicked voice cut through the room. She kneeled by the motionless Dr. Shaw and the bleeding Dr. Cielis, urgently beckoning the others toward her. “Is anyone here a doctor?!” The Colonists didn’t approach, looking lost and defeated. Most of them didn’t even know basic first aid. “Dr. Kallo, is there a way you can use your staff?!” Mira suggested, desperately clutching at Dr. Shaw’s hand.

“No,” Arilus shook his head. “I can, however, patch him up,” he nodded toward the groaning man on the floor.

“Then do it!” Mira shrieked.

As Dr. Kallo headed over to Mira, Yuli stared, heart pounding, at Dr. Shaw’s blank, pale face. This couldn’t be the end for her. There had to be something they could do. Picking up on her line of sight, the code visualizer scanned the engineer, pulling up her code on the nearest screen. Yuli batted the hovering display aside as tears began to trickle down her cheeks. 

Then, an idea struck her. She glanced over at the screen, which appeared slightly blurry through her watery eyes. She had studied the code that simulated breathing mere hours ago. How long would it take for her to find the heartbeat, and did it function similarly?

“Dr. Kallo!” she called out as she pulled up the visualizer’s search tool, looking for the keyword ‘heart.’ She rapidly scanned through the results, nearly sobbing with relief when she found what she was looking for. “Dr. Kallo, do you have some sort of... admin privileges, something you can use to access locked code?”

The man glanced over his shoulder, scowling. “No, I don’t. Why are you asking me this?”

She ignored his question. She didn’t have time to explain. “Explicator!” Yuli cried, glancing up at the ceiling, though logically she knew the AI wasn’t up there. “Explicator, I need to save this woman’s life! Please give me unrestricted access!”

The Explicator’s response was prompt. “You are not authorized to access the locked code.” Her voice obtained a touch of sarcasm. “Wouldn’t want you stopping the breathing of anyone who bothers you.”

Yuli gaped for a moment, flabbergasted. “I would never do something like that! I want to use this to help people!” she exclaimed.

“This is not a wish I can grant on your first day here,” the Explicator said without a trace of sympathy. “You might be the Initiative’s favorite, but I am an impartial entity.”

Yuli’s eyes went wide. “H-how do you know about that?” she demanded, going red in the face.

“I have access to all your psychological records, among other data,” the Explicator answered. “Goodbye, Miss Suriova.”

Yuli’s face burned with indignation. Those mental health checkups were supposed to be confidential. But there were more important matters at hand. “Explicator! Explicator! A woman is dying! Are you just going to let her die?!” she screamed up at the ceiling, eyes flashing with a rage no other Colonist had imagined her capable of.

Yuli received no response. Paralyzed with horror, she watched as the program simulating Dr. Aliyah Shaw’s body checked to see if her heart had beaten within the last three minutes, then ceased running all the subroutines that pertained to being alive. Yuli’s heart thudded in her chest as she stared into the screen. The world went gray before her eyes. All she could hear was the voice of Dr. Luzi, endlessly repeating – People will die. People will die.

“Hey, are you okay?” she heard someone ask as she buried her face in her hands. No, she most definitely wasn’t okay. She had just watched a woman die in cyberspace. She could have warned Dr. Shaw. She could have saved Dr. Shaw. But instead, she had used Dr. Shaw’s life to pay for Sofiya’s. Every Colonist that died here would die because of her inaction.

She would do whatever it took to gain access to that locked code.

-

Blake and Ruo ran for their lives, panting and gasping. If this were the real world, they would have been sweating profusely. It was unsettling, how things like blood and bruises and broken bones were rendered in such realistic detail, yet other processes like sweating and eating were omitted entirely.

They turned a corner sharply, feet skidding on the unnaturally smooth ground, and ran right past a pair of patrolling soldiers, whom they barely spared a glance.

“Hey!” one of the soldiers shouted, breaking into a jog.

“Oh, great,” Ruo wheezed, turning around. “Hey, yourself! What do you want?”

“Where did you just come from?” the clean-cut man inquired.

“Give me that,” Blake snapped, grabbing Ruo’s spike-laden bat without warning. The soldier’s eyes widened as the test subject abruptly changed direction, lunging at him and bashing him across the face.

“What is wrong with you?!” Ruo growled, snatching her weapon back. “You’re going to get us killed!” Without another word, the subjects fled the scene.

Kazim Silina staggered back and cupped a hand over his swelling cheek. Mara slowly made her way to his side, turning the corner to find him gripping his face in a pathetic attempt to stop the bleeding.

“Why’d you follow them, dumbass?” she said. “Let’s head back. Captain Android should probably hear about this.”