Chapter 2: Threads of a Lie

Chapter 2: Threads of a Lie

The metallic chime of the elevator was an executioner’s bell. The heavy, rhythmic footsteps were marching to Tim’s grave. And hers.

“Go,” the thing that wore Tim’s face rasped, its optical sensors flaring with a crimson light. It shoved her, a gesture of surprising, desperate force with a cold, chrome hand. “The fire escape. Now. Pretend you know nothing. Just act scared. It’s your only chance.”

His words, a frantic stream of digital static and garbled code, were her only anchor in the swirling chaos of her mind. The image of his faceplate lying on the floor, smiling vacantly up at the ceiling, was a brand on her soul.

Action overrode thought. Beth scrambled away from the bathroom, her bare feet slipping on the polished hardwood floor. Her knee, her damn programmed knee, screamed in protest as she lunged for the sliding glass door to their balcony. The approaching footsteps were at their door now. A sharp, authoritative knock echoed through the apartment.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Mr. Miller? This is building security. We’ve had a report of a disturbance.” The voice was calm, placid, utterly devoid of emotion.

Beth fumbled with the lock on the balcony door, her fingers slick with sweat. It finally gave way, and she slid it open, a blast of cold, damp air hitting her face. The city lights smeared and bled in the falling rain. The fire escape was a skeletal metal ladder bolted to the side of the building, descending into the abyss.

Behind her, she heard a soft whirring sound, and the lock on the front door disengaged with a clinical click.

She didn’t wait to see who—or what—came in. She swung her legs over the railing, her silk pajama bottoms snagging for a heart-stopping moment on a bolt. Then she was on the cold, wet metal of the fire escape, the grating digging into the soles of her feet. She didn't look back. She just ran, her breath catching in ragged sobs, down and down into the rain-slicked night.

The alley behind the building smelled of ozone and damp concrete, an unnervingly clean scent for a back alley. There were no overflowing dumpsters, no graffiti, just sleek, covered receptacles bearing the Aethelred Properties logo. The world felt muted, scrubbed clean.

Her first instinct, her only instinct, was to find purchase in reality. She needed to hear a familiar voice, a real voice. She fumbled for her phone, its screen a beacon in the gloom. Her hands trembled so badly she could barely unlock it.

Kiera. Her best friend since college. They’d shared secrets, heartbreaks, and too many bottles of wine. Kiera would know what to do. Kiera was real.

Beth’s thumb hovered over the contact photo—the two of them laughing, arms slung around each other on a beach that suddenly felt like a distant, impossible dream. She pressed ‘call.’

The phone didn’t even ring. It went straight to a generic, synthesized voice: “The subscriber you have dialed is not available. Please leave a message after the tone.”

Beep.

Beth stared at the phone, a cold dread seeping into her bones, far colder than the rain. Kiera’s phone was never off. Never. Her custom voicemail, a ridiculously cheerful clip from some pop song, was her trademark.

“Kiera?” she whispered into the phone, her voice cracking. “It’s me. Something’s… something terrible has happened with Tim. Call me back. Please, God, just call me back.”

She hung up, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. It was nothing. A dead battery. A bad signal. There were a hundred rational explanations. She forced herself to breathe, the rain plastering her hair to her face.

Okay. Stacey. Her other rock. Practical, no-nonsense Stacey, who worked in finance and always had a plan.

She dialed.

Again, the instant, soulless click. “The subscriber you have dialed is not available…”

“No,” Beth choked out, pulling the phone away from her ear as if it were burning her. “No, no, no.”

This wasn't a coincidence. This was a pattern. This was the lie Tim had spoken of, its threads beginning to show.

A frantic, desperate energy seized her. She opened her messaging app.

To: Kiera SOMETHING IS WRONG. TIM ISN’T REAL. CALL ME. I’M SCARED.

To: Stacey ANSWER YOUR PHONE. PLEASE. EMERGENCY.

She hit send, watching the screen with burning intensity, willing the little blue checkmarks to appear. Instead, under each message, a small, red notification popped up.

Message Not Delivered.

The words hung there, a digital death sentence. It wasn't just that they weren't answering. It was that they didn't exist. The numbers were dead ends. The digital ghosts of fabricated friends.

She stumbled out of the alley onto the street. The rain fell in perfectly straight, uniform lines, each drop hitting the immaculate pavement with the same quiet hiss. The streets of the Enclave, usually bustling even at this hour, were nearly empty. A few sleek, silent vehicles, likely automated, whispered past with their windows darkly tinted. There were no pedestrians, no laughter from distant bars, no life. It was a scale model of a city, beautiful and dead.

Her gaze drifted upward, back to the monolithic tower of her condominium. She found her floor, the twenty-seventh. The light in her apartment, 27B, was still on. A perfect little box of light in a wall of perfect little boxes.

We’re products in a luxury real estate showroom.

Tim’s mechanical voice echoed in her head. A showroom. A display. Was anyone even watching?

She felt a phantom itch behind her right ear, where he’d said the seam was. Her fingers flew to the spot, tracing the delicate skin where her jaw met her neck. She felt nothing but smooth, unbroken flesh, but the thought of it—a hidden panel, an access point—sent a wave of nausea through her. She was too terrified to press harder, to really search. To find the proof that she was just a thing.

Panic gave way to a chilling, desolate clarity. Her friends were a lie. Her home was a cage. The man she loved was a collection of wires and servos, and was likely being disassembled on their living room floor right now.

Decommissioned.

A sob escaped her lips, raw and hopeless. She was utterly, completely alone, a glitch in a system she hadn’t even known existed. The rain washed over her, but it couldn't wash away the filth of the truth.

She had to know for sure. If her friends weren’t real, what was? Her job? Her education? Her childhood?

A memory surfaced, uploaded or not, it was all she had. The smell of her mother's rose garden. The splintered wood of the porch swing at her childhood home on Sycamore Street. A place that had to be real. A foundation that couldn't be a lie.

It was a long way across the sterile, sleeping city. But it was the only destination she had left. Clenching her useless phone in her fist, Beth started walking, a ghost in a city of ghosts, searching for a memory that might not even be hers.