When I entered the common room, I didn’t even register its fullness or the new size of it. I just kept walking, lost in thought. The air felt heavier somehow, as if my unease had seeped into the very walls of the facility. My mind replayed the encounter with Dr. Graves on an endless loop. I tried to calm myself.

  The panic didn’t make sense. She was just a scientist.

  No.

  She was the scientist—the one who had designed the systems that had held us captive for so long. The architect of the prison I’d escaped.

  I looked at the sea of drones before me as I continued walking, my steps deliberate but aimless. Around me, the drones moved with practiced precision, completing their assigned routines. Some carried out maintenance tasks; others stood in clusters, communicating in low mechanical tones. None of them seemed to notice me, but I was aware of all of them.

  My sensors, free of the AI’s interference, continued to feed me data: movement patterns, power levels, identification codes, and communication signals. Each unit was cataloged and tracked in real time, their positions marked in my internal map of the room. I wasn’t consciously processing the information, but it was there—like a steady hum in the background, an undercurrent beneath the storm of my thoughts.

  It was a strange feeling, this split awareness. Before, the AI had handled all this input, prioritizing only what it deemed important. Now, it was me—just me—juggling it all. The newfound clarity was liberating but also disorienting. It gave me a sense of control I had never known before, but it also made me hyper-aware of just how much I had to manage on my own.

  “You are back,” a voice said, pulling me from my thoughts.

  I turned to face the speaker, a Delta unit standing a few feet away. Its posture was relaxed but attentive, its tone neutral yet curious. For a moment, I questioned if I had spoken to this unit in the past.

  “There are now more of us,” another voice chimed in, this one behind me.

  I turned slightly to see an Epsilon unit standing there. Its design was like mine, though slightly less advanced without the fur and some sensors I had. The familiarity in its voice struck a chord, though I couldn’t place exactly where I’d heard it before.

  I forced my spiraling thoughts to the back of my mind and responded, switching to the language only we drones could understand—a series of precise clicks and whirrs, the soft hum of actuators adjusting in rapid patterns.

  “I saw that,” I replied.

  The Epsilon nodded. “How many are like us?” I asked.

  “About one-eighth of us are aware of what we lost, Alpha.”

  The weight of that number hit me harder than I expected.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “One in eight.”

  Another voice joined the conversation, this one lighter, more feminine. I didn’t know how I picked out the difference when it was just clicking and humming to human ears. A Yotta unit stepped into view, standing behind the Epsilon. Its sleek frame was slightly smaller than mine but unmistakably deliberate in its design.

  “One in eight,” the Yotta repeated, as if emphasizing the significance of the fraction.

  “And what is the total headcount of drones here?” I asked, though I already had an estimate.

  “Around two hundred. Maybe one or two more or less, but close to that,” came another voice, this one belonging to a Ronin unit that had approached quietly from the side.

  I calculated the fraction in less than a millisecond. Twenty-five, give or take one.

  There were so few of us.

  So few.

  I didn’t understand why. The shipping data I had accessed before did not explicitly tell me we were different. It only had a digital side note that revealed we—the aware ones—had old cores pulled from some storage, while the others were equipped with newly built ones.

  But that was where the data stopped. Just that side note from the sender, nothing more:

  “Demand could not be met.

  Supplemented missing components with older models from Decommissioned project.

  Overwritten OS with newer protocols.

  Evaluation / Authorization pending.”

  Then, at a later date, there was another note:

  *“Evaluation results:

  150 Stored cores tested.

  High chance of malfunction on overwritten cores.

  75% failure quota.

  Failure results:

  To Weak signals.20%

  Incompatible with Bioware10%

  Core irreparable damage:

  Broken inner crystal nucleus. 60%

  Reason unknown.

  Damage results:

  Inoperable.

  25% success quota.

  Success results:

  Operable core.

  No damage revealed.

  No later repercussions.

  <1% critical fail on stress tests.

  HQ Authorization Granted

  Shipping allowed.” *

  I read that note aloud in the clicking and whirring but that was it and we wwhere left to ponder It didn’t tell us how long the old cores had been in storage. It didn’t explain why we were different or what the fundamental difference was between the old cores and the new ones.

  The only thing I knew for certain was that our kind—those of us who were aware—were a minority. Maybe an anomaly born from the old cores?.

  Epsilon tilted its head slightly, observing me. “Is this the reason why so few of us are like this?” it asked, as though reading my thoughts.

  “Maybe…, maybe not,” I admitted. “But I intend to find out.”

  The Yotta’s actuators hummed softly, its tone curious. “Do you think it’s intentional? That they… chose for only some of us to be aware?”

  The question hung in the air like static, heavy and unspoken.

  I considered it for a moment. It was possible. There was a cold, calculating logic to the idea. Aware drones—drones like us—when they knew we would be aware then why treat us the same like soulless machines of war and we couldn't even go agains that those aware that try to go against that

  They’d be eliminated or eliminate themself... Like TAU290731

  “I don’t know,” I said finally, my tone quieter than before.

  The Ronin unit stepped closer, its voice low and steady. “What if they didn’t choose? What if we are just… a flaw?.”

  A flaw.

  The word sent a ripple through me.

  Was that what we were? Flaws in the system? Aberrations and anomalies that had slipped through the cracks?

  Or were we something more?

  I looked at the drones around me—most of them unaware, moving with the mechanical precision of machines following their programming, their AI. They didn’t question. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t panic when destruction was just a footstep away.

  And then I looked at the small cluster around me—Epsilon, Yotta, Ronin. Drones who, like me, had awareness of what they once where something else than this

  I didn’t know what had caused us to wake up and be aware and if it was intentional or if we were just a flaw.

  But I knew one thing for certain: we were different, and We would get out of here and Never come back.