CHAPTER EIGHT: GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE
1304 Words
Weeks had transformed Maverick-920.
Ehimen moved through the training yard like a storm, his laughter cutting through the usual grim silence of the compound. Where others hesitated, he charged, whether in sparring, marksmanship, or even the grueling neural endurance drills.
"That boy is a damn revelation," Commander Idowu mused, watching Ehimen land three consecutive headshots blindfolded.
Vice Commander Amarachi smiled, her fingers tracing the voltage regulator in her pocket. "Our most successful recalibration yet."
But in the quiet moments, when Ehimen thought no one was looking, he would pause, just for a second and tilt his head, as if listening to a voice only he could hear.
That night, the lights stuttered.
Bayo frowned at the monitors, static flickered, then cleared. Just a glitch, he thought, adjusting his headphones.
Then, a shriek.
Not from the speakers. From the door beside him.
The sound needled through his headphones, sharp enough to make his teeth ache. He grabbed his pistol, finger already on the trigger.
The door was unlocked.
Impossible. That door never opened.
He stepped inside, weapon raised, every shadow a potential muzzle flash.
Bayo crept forward, then froze.
A sound. Not human, not machine. The wet scrape of metal on flesh.
He sprinted toward it, pistol raised and there, strapped to a surgical vault, lay Maverick-411’s corpse.
Or what was left of her.
Upper Body: Still human, mostly. Her ribcage had been splayed open like a maintenance hatch, lungs pumping in transparent nutrient sacs.
Lower Body: Replaced with HK-Vanguard hydraulics, the joints still dripping synovial fluid.
Head: Skull cracked wide, brain replaced by a nest of fiber-optic cables pulsing with blue electrolyte.
Then, her remaining eye snapped open. The other was a mechanical orb, its red lens whirring as it focused on Bayo.
Her voice emerged half scream, half static:
"T-tell Aisha... they're using us... to UPGRADE them…"
A spark burst from her throat. She convulsed, the human half of her face still weeping as the machine half kept talking:
"ERROR. MEMORY CORRUPTION DETECTED. INITIATING PURGE."
Bayo’s skin prickled with electric dread. His pistol clanged against the floor, the sound echoing like a death knell.
He scrambled backward, hands slipping on blood-smeared concrete but the doors slammed shut. Thick, acrid smoke coiled from the vents, carrying a chorus of distorted voices:
"YOU WERE LIED TO! THEY’LL RECYCLE YOU LIKE THEY DID TO US, PIECE BY PIECE!"
Bayo clawed at his throat, lungs burning. The oxygen was vanishing, or was it just terror?
Then…
TAP.
Lieutenant Tayo’s bored face loomed over him. "Wake up, moron. You’re drooling on the monitors."
Bayo jerked upright, his uniform soaked in sweat. The surveillance room hummed normally.
Just a nightmare.
But as he stumbled to his bunk, his fingers brushed fresh needle marks on his neck.
A sharp beep shattered the midnight silence. Bayo’s private terminal flickered to life:
>> UNKNOWN SENDER
>> THEY’RE RECYCLING THE DEAD. FLOOR 7, SECTION 5. CONFIRM IT YOURSELF.
Bayo’s fingers hovered over the keys. Floor 7 didn’t exist, not officially. It was a Council-only zone, locked behind biometric scans and neural clearance.
Yet… the voice in his nightmare had said the exact same thing.
Bayo though of a plan:
Camera Hack – Loop a 30-second decoy feed on all surveillance monitors.
Access – Use the waste disposal chute the only blind spot in the security net.
Silence – Tell no one. Not even Aisha. If this was real, trust was a liability.
He took a steadying breath. If he was caught, he’d join the "recycled."
Bayo slipped into the elevator just as the doors closed, no witnesses. The ascent to the forbidden seventh floor felt like it took an eternity.
At the door marked "SECTION 5 – AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY", his usual hacking tricks failed. The lock was Council-grade encryption, far beyond standard keycard overrides.
Should he call Dike?
No. Dike’s loyalty was questionable, and this wasn’t a risk worth sharing.
Bayo dug deeper, pulling up an old maintenance protocol from the system archives. A 30-second bypass window appeared, just enough to slip inside.
The door hissed open.
Darkness.
The air smelled of ozone and decay.
He stepped forward into the heart of the Council’s secret.
Bayo’s breath caught in his throat.
There they were.
The fallen Mavericks, the ones given full military burials, the ones mourned as heroes were here. Dismantled. Rebuilt.
Bodies Suspended: Each soldier floated in a transparent surgical vault, bathed in oxygenated fluid to keep the remaining flesh from rotting.
Half Human, Half Machine:
Skulls Cracked Open, brains laced with fiber-optic cables pulsing with artificial neurons.
Mechanical Eyes, one human orb left intact, to preserve vision? Or to torment them with what they’d become?.
Hydraulic Limbs grafted where bone and muscle once were, tubes pumping electrolyte-rich "blood" through synthetic veins.
HK Upgrades: The same titanium plating, the same neural ports used in the HK units but fused with human tissue.
A Council Blueprint. A screen nearby displays: "PROJECT ECHO: HUMAN-TO-HK CONVERSION – 67% SUCCESS RATE."
Bayo's breath hitched. This wasn't a nightmare he could wake from.
His body locked up, mind scrambling for options. With shaking hands, he fired off a message:
>> WHO SENT YOU?
>> HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SECTION 5?
>> ARE YOU ONE OF THEM? OR ONE OF US?
>> ANSWER ME. WHAT’S PROJECT ECHO?
The screen stayed dark. No typing indicator. No reply.
Only silence, cold, unresponsive. Only the faint hum of the lab's machinery answered him.
Bayo’s screen finally lit up:
>> UNKNOWN: FOR MY SAFETY, I STAY ANONYMOUS. BUT I WAS MAVERICK-760 UNTIL I LEARNED THE TRUTH.
Bayo’s fingers flew across the screen:
>> BAYO: WHAT TRUTH?! I’M IN SECTION 5 RIGHT NOW, STARING AT CORPSES TURNED INTO MACHINES, AND I STILL DON’T UNDERSTAND!
A pause. Then:
>> UNKNOWN: UNDERSTANDING COMES LATER. SURVIVAL COMES FIRST.
>> UNKNOWN: THEY’LL KILL YOU IF THEY FIND YOU THERE. MOVE.
The lights above him flickered was that footsteps in the hall?
Bayo typed furiously but his message bounced back.
>> ERROR: RECIPIENT UNREACHABLE
The chat history dissolved pixel by pixel, erasing all traces of the conversation.
He was alone.
And Section 5’s doors just clicked unlocked behind him.
The door hissed open. Bayo didn’t turn he already knew the rhythmic cadence of Council-approved footsteps. Dr. Mensah, the project lead for "Cognitive Retention," stood silhouetted in the doorway, her white coat smeared with something dark and viscous.
Bayo’s neural implant should have flared with compliance protocols, flooding his mind with static to suppress rebellion. Yet, silence. No warning pulses. No voice hissing “dangerous thoughts”.
Why wasn’t it stopping him?
He acted before logic caught up. A smoke grenade, stolen minutes ago, just in case, rolled from his sleeve. He slammed it against the floor and bolted past Mensah’s coughing form, her shouted orders muffled but before the alarms blared. He vaulted into the ventilation shaft as bootsteps pounded down the hall.
The vents pumped sedative gas, but Bayo had mapped the ducts during night shifts. He crawled through maintenance tunnels, his implant strangely, mercifully dormant, as if…
As if it wanted him to see.
Back in his bunk, Bayo clutched his knees to steady his breathing. Three truths crystallized:
The Council was rebuilding the dead as hybrid soldiers.
His implant had allowed the rebellion which meant it was either faulty, or someone had tampered with it.
Someone inside the system was feeding him truths… and that made them far more dangerous than any HK.
His hand hovered over his comms. Dike. Emeka. Aisha. Any of them could be a Council plant.
Then, a new message blinked on his wrist display:
>> UNKNOWN: YOU SURVIVED. NOW YOU’LL NEED TO CHOOSE; FIGHT THE LIE, OR BECOME IT?
The screen went black.
Somewhere in the compound, a machine with a human eye powered on.
- Writer
