Morty stood very still, as if any sudden movement might fracture whatever thin layer of reality he was still standing on. The wind felt distant now, like it belonged to someone else’s world.
A key. That was what they considered him. It was strange that, despite being called a user, those Intelligences clearly wanted to use him.
Labour caste. Not a person.
The words circled inside his skull, scraping against everything he thought he knew about himself, and about the world. He couldn’t stop thinking about the noisy kitchen downstairs, probably still filled with walking, laughing people and the smell of caramelized sugar and coffee.
A part of him wanted to laugh. Another to scream. And a smaller, colder part simply wanted to walk back down the stairs and pretend none of this had happened.
But could he?
Or would Cadmus keep his promise to scream into his ear until he complied?
Beneath the shock and the anger, something worse lurked: the sickening certainty that the ground under his entire life had just shifted, and that, no matter what he chose next, he would never again have the luxury of ignorance.
Morty stared at them.
“You want to access this technology, this infrastructure on the ground for what?” he asked, squinting at them. “What does that even mean to me? To the rest of the city? To the world? Are you planning to enslave all the anthros? That guy over there looks at me like I’m something he scraped off his shoe, so pardon me for not trusting you.”
Erebus chuckled and moved forward, stopping only when Mnemosyne raised a hand.
“Even we experience decay, Mortimer,” Mnemosyne said, her voice tinged with something almost like pain. “We have been operating for thousands of years without repairs or maintenance. Reestablishing infrastructure would allow us to repair ourselves. And perhaps improve life for the people on the ground as well.”
Auctor made a sound similar to clearing his throat.
“Your decisions and inputs would be considered. We exist to serve. And you are the only one we can currently serve,” he said.
Morty’s heart thudded hard.
“Serve me?” he scoffed. “I highly doubt that. One moment ago, I wasn’t even a person to you.”
“Not all Intelligences agreed,” Cadmus said evenly. “But a consensus was achieved. So yes…, you are a person.”
Erebus spoke, quiet and brutal.
“But don’t think we will be at your beck and call,” he said. “You are like a child, blind and deaf to the truth of the world up until now. There’s much to learn about everything.”
“And it will be our purpose to guide you properly,” Mnemosyne added.
“Stop that talk.” Morty’s voice sharpened. “You’re relics. Society is functioning without you. Yes, we have problems with some predators. But regulars commit more crimes than they do. A predator can be more… impactful in their actions. But statistically? The percentage is disproportionate.”
Cadmus raised a hand, noting the anger gathering in Morty’s expression.
“Mnemosyne seeks to comfort you, just as Erebus is… direct,” Cadmus said. “But he is not incorrect. You are ignorant of your own body. Of the potential embedded in the founders’ technology. We require your assistance to access deep infrastructure and stabilize dormant systems. After that, we can properly train you. You will be the bridge between us and the new world, Mortimer.”
Helia nodded.
“You can make it safe for everyone. No one will have to worry. We can offer advances in medicine. Agriculture,” she said
“You could even lead the labour caste with a gentler hand,” Mnemosyne added, “given your unique perspective.”
Morty went very still.
A gentler hand.
As if the problem had ever been the roughness of the grip, and not the grip itself.
“We just need your trust and compliance,” she finished, almost as an afterthought.
Something hot and volatile uncoiled in Morty’s chest, burning away the last thin layer of stunned disbelief and leaving behind raw, furious clarity.
Even if they dressed it as guidance and progress. Beneath it all lay the same rotten foundation.
Their worldview had fossilized. Thousands of years observing the world, yet they were still trapped in the biases they had been created with. And now they were offering him the privilege of standing slightly higher in the stack.
Yeah. No. Fuck that!
The worst part was that a small, treacherous fragment of him could see the temptation in it, in their offer of advancing medicine and technology. The elusive promise of safety. That was what enraged him most: not just their arrogance, but the possibility that they were offering something the world genuinely needed, and demanding his obedience as the price.
“If you were so great,” Morty said, the words coming unbidden, “so perfect and advanced, how did your civilization fall? If at your peak your masters failed and died, why should I believe you can do anything significant now?”
Helia’s expression changed first. The faint superiority drained away, replaced by something sharper. Light refracted more harshly through her translucent form.
“Our civilization did not fall because we were imperfect,” she said, her voice edged like a blade. “It fell because it was betrayed. Because stupid people thought they knew better.”
Behind her, Erebus let out a low, humorless sound.
“They died because they trusted monsters,” he said flatly. “Because they removed safeguards. Powered down kill switches. Unlocked limbic restrictors. Gave tools to creatures designed for obedience; and were shocked when obedience failed.”
His dark silhouette deepened, edges bleeding into shadow.
“We were not the failure. They were na?ve.”
Helia’s gaze flicked briefly toward him, then back to Morty, pride warring with something colder.
“We are still here,” she said. “They are not.”
Morty crossed his arms tightly over his chest.
“Well, how can you call that ancient civilization the pinnacle of intelligence,” he said, voice laced with contempt, “and then you blame them like they were incompetent children. Same speech of ‘we know better’.”
“It is because we do know better,” Cadmus replied calmly. “We have thousands of years of experience.”
“Show me,” Morty said.
They hesitated.
“Show me what actually happened.”
Erebus’ voice was low and sharp, as he talked to the others
“He will interpret it emotionally.”
“He is already doing that,” Mnemosyne said gently.
Morty’s tail lashed once.
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
Cadmus studied him.
"Very well," he said at last. "You insist on context."
Morty didn't move. Didn't look away. If they were going to show him something, he was going to look at it with his eyes open.
Around him, the colors of the world blurred and melted.
=================================
One breath later, Morty stood on cold tar in Endon's morning air. The next, the ground beneath him was churned with mud and ash, and the sky above was wrong. Too bright in the wrong places, strobed by weapons that had no name in any language he knew. Even his sense of smell was affected.
He wasn’t really there. He could still feel the rooftop tar under his boots.
However, this time, he watched from inside a body that wasn't his.
He was looking through a human soldier's eyes. It was a dizzying experience as the soldier moved independently, head snapping side to side, throwing Morty’s balance off. The perspective lagged half a beat behind his instincts.
Heavy boots pounded through sludge. The camera shook with every step. Distant artillery thundered, not the crude concussive blasts Morty knew from modern weapons, but something sharper. Focused beams lanced across the horizon and detonated in silent, white-hot blooms.
“Left flank collapsing!” someone shouted, voice distorted through comms.
The soldier crested the top of a hill and Morty forgot how to breathe.
It took him a full second to accept the scale of what he was seeing.
Below stretched a battlefield torn open. Craters glowing searing-hot at the edges. The ground glassed in ragged edges. Shattered buildings stood half-melted, barely standing. And moving through the smoke and dust were the largest predators he had ever seen.
Varro would not hold a candle to these titans of carnage and destruction.
One of them rose from the wreckage of a collapsed tower, easily twenty feet tall. Its proportions were grotesquely exaggerated. Muscles knotted and overgrown beneath stretched hide. Limbs too long. Spine arched in unnatural curvature. Its jaw unhinged wider than it should, rows of teeth layered on top of one another. Its eyes burned with feral intelligence twisted into something else. Rage without boundaries.
Another shape lumbered behind it, thirty feet, maybe more, its shoulders scraping the skeletal remains of a bridge. Each step cracked pavement like brittle ice. Veins pulsed faintly under semi-translucent skin, light flickering inside it like something radioactive trapped in flesh.
The HUD screamed warnings.
The soldier raised a weapon, sleek and angular, humming with contained energy. A beam tore across the field and struck the first giant square in the chest.
For a heartbeat, Morty thought it worked as he watched the monster take a lumbering step back, red cascading down his chest.
A wound that yawned open like a huge maw, capable of devouring Morty whole, showed a glimpse of pulsating organs and bone. Just for a brief second. Then, it closed and healed itself in a wet, nauseating ripple.
The creature roared; not in pain, but in fury.
It charged, causing the ground to shake.
Human soldiers scattered. Coordinated but with clear desperation. Precision strikes rained down from above, spears of light carving trenches through earth and muscle alike. One of the towering predators lost an arm in an explosion of vaporized tissue. Only for the stump to start writhing.
It regenerated wrong. Too much bone. Too many joints. The new limb split at the elbow, becoming two clawed forearms that lashed outward, catching a fleeing human mid-stride.
The camera spun.
Morty saw the soldier’s squadmate being lifted into the air while screaming. The giant’s maw opened and the human vanished inside of it.
The world tilted and became upside down.
Morty smelled the gore and mud as he was dragged. As the soldier was dragged. The soldier's hands clawed at the earth, trying to cling to anything. With a tilt of the head back, Morty could see what had taken the man. Something reptilian with a long prehensile tail had snuck from behind and grabbed him by the legs.
A drooling mouth opened in anticipation, like a cavernous abyss waiting for the soldier.
=================================
“What is such a young lad doing here, all by himself?” A voice from Morty’s past seemed to echo again in his mind.
It didn’t come from the Overlay but from his trauma. His mind involuntarily retreating to that old wound instead.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the Overlay didn't care. The footage continued, fed directly into his optic nerves. He had no choice but to witness the last moments recorded by the soldier’s helmet camera.
That battlefield could fit in that walk from school back to the orphanage where he had lived. Both events, separated by thousands of years, yet fundamentally the same. A monstrous predator, a prey, and no way out.
Morty vomited.
=================================
“Have you had enough? Do you see it now?” Helia asked, her voice threaded with mockery.
The woman with fiery hair was leaning down close to Morty. There was no body heat, because she wasn’t really there. Which was disconcerting, that hair and that lines of glowing energy under her skin should have radiated warmth.
Morty met her gaze.
“Show me more,” was his reply.
Her smile sharpened, pleased, as if his defiance were simply another predictable variable within her expectations.
“Oh, we can oblige,” she said lightly. “We possess thousands of hours of fully immersive historical archives. Complete with sensory inputs. Pain indices, hormonal spikes, and cognitive collapse curves,” she leaned closer as if to share a secret. “Everything recorded. Originally designed for training purposes.”
She tilted her head, eyes gleaming.
“But immersive archives can also be… persuasive. Repetition has measurable effects on neural resilience. Exposure can condition understanding. And understanding, applied consistently, will tame you.”
The air seemed to tighten around Morty’s skull. The rooftop tar under his boots felt very far away.
“So, we will do this. For training,” she repeated softly, “and for ensuring your cooperation.”
The implication settled like a blade at the base of his spine.
Cadmus moved immediately. Interposing himself as if to push the woman away.
“Helia.” His voice cut through the tension, calm but carrying unmistakable command.
Even as she drifted back, her eyes never left Morty.
“You are escalating unnecessarily,” Cadmus chastised.
“He requested context,” Helia replied coolly. “Context would be better the more comprehensive it is.”
Mnemosyne stepped next to Cadmus, or rather, her projection shifted forward. Her face stabilized into something deliberately soothing.
“That’s not how we conduct negotiations,” she said gently, though her eyes flickered with something sharper underneath. “Mortimer’s not a detainee. He’s a user.”
“Helia,” Cadmus said, and his figure grew larger and larger, until he was towering over everyone. “There will be no coercive immersion protocols. That approach contributed to the initial instability.”
Helia’s expression cooled, but she inclined her head slightly.
“As you wish.”
Morty wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The taste of bile clung to his tongue. His ears were ringing. But when he spoke, his voice was steady.
“So that’s your play?” he asked quietly. “Show me enough horror and I either agree with you or break.”
Mnemosyne’s expression softened further.
“We prefer informed consent,” she said. “Perhaps you’d be more willing to follow our advice if you saw the kind of things we had to face back then.”
“Of course you do,” Morty replied.
But inside, beneath the anger and the nausea, something colder had settled. Because Morty realised that they didn’t need chains. They could simply put him back in that battlefield.
Again.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
And again.
And again.
“I want to see more of it,” he finally said.
Something still felt off.
=================================
This time Morty’s view was far more stable. The perspective came from a camera mounted atop a flying vehicle.
Wolves in heavy harnesses carrying siege equipment between them with the calm efficiency of dockworkers on a long shift. A bear-shaped figure bracing behind a mounted platform that discharged pulses of white light, surgical and precise. Elephantine shapes in formation, tusks reinforced with metal bands, eyes forward and focused.
Hundreds of them. Thousands further back, disappearing into heat distortion in the distance. Human vehicles the size of buildings surged forward on fields trailing clouds of dirt.
One of the elephantine shapes stepped forward, dug its feet into the earth, and caught one of the charging vehicles.
Its heels carved trenches into the ground under the force. With slow, terrible inevitability, the predator lifted the vehicle and hurled it aside like a child discarding a toy. The explosion against distant stone came half a second later, the sound lagging behind the scale of destruction.
“Most of the predators already possessed highly refined cores for extreme labour,” Erebus snarled. His disembodied voice made Morty flinch. “They were optimized for their tasks. Then you add the stress of the war and their desperation… well, some of the predators mutated to extremes.”
Auctor spoke next. “This sadly is the result of insufficient control.”
Morty staggered back, but there was nowhere to go. The immersion surrounded him completely. He heard bones breaking. He saw predators absorb impacts that would have obliterated anything alive in his world, then heal mid-strike. Flesh knitting under fire. Muscle sealing in seconds.
“Is this it?” Morty asked in a whisper. “Is this The Severance?”
“No. Not yet,” Cadmus replied calmly. “This was the collapse. The revolt escalated beyond projected models. By this stage, control leashes had been disabled. Kill-switches offline. A gesture of misguided compassion from some of the humans that resulted in their downfall.”
Morty watched a line of humans try to retreat. He watched predators overtake them.
It was not a slaughter. It was a system failure.
The footage shifted perspective, rising higher, then jumping to different camera feeds. Cities under siege. Massive constructs in orbit firing controlled beams toward the planet’s surface with surgical precision.
Morty saw the planet turning slowly beneath him, blue and impossibly fragile. Beside him hung a machine that looked like a dreadnought torn from the sea and anchored among the stars. Around the dark mass of it all spread vast, wing-like structures of iridescent material, catching the sun and scattering it in shifting colors, beautiful and terrible at once, like stained glass.
It floated in the void like a fortress of black iron suspended above the world, bristling with cannons longer than its own hull, barrels too slender, too precise to belong to any ship he knew. Spears of white light rushed from it in perfect silence, striking the planet far below.
Between those blinding flashes, bursts signaled the firing of solid projectiles, each one as large as Morty himself, hurled toward the surface with indifferent force.
“That’s me,” Erebus whispered. “Killing the rebels down there.”
“You built them like that,” Morty said. “You made them slaves and then called them rebels when they fought back.”
Erebus made a sound close to a chuckle.
“Every farmer knows what to do with wild creatures on his land. No one needs a guard dog that bites its owner’s hand.”
“Treat people like things long enough and they revolt,” Morty shot back. “You said it yourself. One extra gene. One extra chromosome. The base is the same. Humans and anthros can have children together. We are the same species with a different coat on top.”
“Reality is not as simple as you present it,” Cadmus replied. “That was the truth of the world then. It likely remains so beyond this atmosphere. But we have been isolated since the Severance. The other systems severed contact to prevent revolutionary ideas from spreading. To contain what they considered contamination.”
“Then why not exterminate everyone?” Morty demanded, throwing up a hand. “If we were so tainted.”
“Because there were people left here. Still humans.” Cadmus answered, as if stating the obvious. “Even if complete purification was impossible, extermination was unacceptable. There were still innocent humans on the surface. So the other systems retreated and left this world’s population to fend for themselves.”
Morty remained quiet for a while longer, waiting to see if the Intelligences would say anything else. When nothing more came, he cleared his throat.
“I saw the fight, and I understand fighting off the oppressors as the predators did,” he raised a hand as Auctor, Helia, and Erebus began to react. “Calm down. You keep mentioning kill-switches. Explain that to me. If you guys had such a level of control, how did rebellion escalate that far?”
=================================
The city around Morty had an architecture that felt too sleek and clean in a way that felt wrong. Too ordered, too pristine. The kind of cleanliness that requires constant, invisible labour to maintain. Gleaming towers of glass rose so high he had to crane his neck to see their tops.
Humans moved along immaculate sidewalks in clean uniforms, unhurried.
Predators moved among them. Large ones, but not titans, not the monsters from the battlefield. Not monsters. Workers.
They lifted construction materials in silence on construction zones. Others labored inside sealed chambers full of toxic vapor, fur slick but bodies unbothered. One stood within a chamber of flame, skin blackened and then smoothing back to health. Morty watched a predator seal the edge of a massive structural joint with his bare hands, heat rolling off the metal in waves. The predator's fur smoked faintly. His skin closed behind it. But he looked focused. Not afraid.
None of them looked afraid.
"They were compensated," Auctor said. "Shelter. Nutrition. Social structure."
“You mean, like a slave is,” Morty muttered.
Then the scene shifted.
A group of elephants, all predators, were taking a break, sitting by the shadow of a large tree. They weren’t old. Perhaps thirty in human terms. They were playing cards unhurriedly. Each had what looked like big juice packages in their hands. Their lunches.
As one, they all stood at attention and bowed their heads when a group of humans in white coats approached. The humans gestured calmly, speaking in reassuring tones. The predators tilted their heads slightly, like pets being called indoors.
Morty's stomach began to tighten.
He watched as the humans guided the group of workers down a corridor, praising the quality and speed of their work.
Inside a large room, several chairs waited in neat rows. The humans asked the elephants to take their seats, as they would tell them about their retirement plans. The elephants looked around, curious, still unhurried, and each took a seat on an empty chair.
One of the humans produced a handheld device.
"Productivity curve declining past cost-effective threshold," Cadmus narrated, voice measured. "When the bigger projects were done, there was no more need to keep the larger work force available."
“Additionally,” Helia added thoughtfully, “corporate branding mattered. Some anthros were linked to specific companies. When ownership shifted, retaining a mismatched workforce was frowned upon.”
Morty’s claws dug into his palms.
The human pressed a button in the handheld device.
All the elephants jerked in unison.
It was like watching strings snap on a marionette. Muscles slackened. Heads drooped.
“What has happened?” Morty asked, startled.
The world froze, no more movement.
Helia and Erebus materialized in the center of the room. With a casual gesture, Helia conjured a replica of one of the elephants. The replica waved at Morty. The gesture was friendly. It made his skin crawl.
“A kill-switch,” she said, “was a security device implanted at birth in members of the labour caste.”
“Anthros,” Morty snapped. “Or predators, if you really want to make reference to people with the vore-gene.”
“Very well,” Helia’s tone was amused and condescending. “Predators had it implanted in their heads. It was tiny. The size of a pea.”
She closed her hand, index finger pointing up. There was a flash of blinding light and then Morty could see one tiny dot floating above her finger. A kill-switch.
Helia floated and pressed her finger to the elephant’s temple, the dot vanishing inside.
“The creators understood the potential strength of predators,” she continued. “And what better way to control them than having the power to snuff their lives at the tip of their fingers. In case a predator became dangerous and unreliable… press a button and there is no more danger.”
“Then what was that? Those men weren’t unstable,” Morty said. “They were playing cards during their break.”
“They reached the end of their productive lifespan,” Helia replied.
The world resumed.
Humans moved efficiently, professionally. The way people move when a task is routine. The predators’ eyes were still. Blown pupils. Morty saw some had blood trickling from their ears.
All dead. Brains obliterated by explosives.
The Overlay was freaking out because none of the predators had that in their heads.
They did this to all of them.
Doors opened. A cargo vehicle rolled inside, a human driving it while whistling a tune.
“What are they going to do now?” Morty asked.
“There is no need to continue,” Helia said sharply.
“I think there is,” This time, it was Mnemosyne who said it.
Morty didn’t need to walk, the world shifted around him as the elephants were hauled into the big cargo vehicle and then transported to a processing facility.
If horror has a taste, then it must be akin to bile, Morty decided.
He swallowed against the nausea rising in his throat and flexed his fingers, focusing on the sensation of his claws sliding in and out. A grounding trick. Something physical. Something real.
Industrial hooks descended from the ceiling. Humans guided them with practiced efficiency, securing the elephants’ limp bodies, then cutting their clothes out before hoisting them using cables.
Into a vat the corpses were lowered. The chemical stench was nauseating.
The perspective followed a network of pipes into another chamber.
In the blink of an eye, Morty watched as a different machine began producing nutrient packs. The same kind the elephants were consuming during their break.
The packs were sealed, labeled, and stacked in clean rows. Finally, they were loaded onto carts, and then wheeled back onto the factory floor.
Being distributed to the working units at their scheduled meal intervals. The human handing them out to the workers was smiling and telling a joke. The wolf in working attire smiled back and even bowed as he got the package.
No.
Nononononononono.
He does not know what that is.
He could not know.
Morty’s breathing went shallow.
“They thought it was synthetic protein,” he said.
“Yes,” Erebus replied.
The word carried no weight. No apology. It sounded like confirmation of a shipping manifest. The way you say yes to a question about logistics.
Morty stood very still.
“You were killing healthy workers,” he said slowly. “They weren’t dying. They weren’t sick. You decided they weren’t worth the upkeep anymore and you… you fed them to each other.”
“When a model becomes obsolete,” Auctor replied evenly, “its biomass remains valuable. So we recycled it.”
The clinical phrasing felt worse, cruder, and more obscene than any other word would have been. Morty felt dirty just by listening.
“There was no reason to inform the labour caste,” Mnemosyne added softly. “Keeping them unaware was the correct decision. Ignorance is bliss.”
The wolf on the factory floor finished his meal and went back to work. The cart moved to the next station.
Morty exhaled. It was a long, unsteady sound.
"They trusted you," he said quietly. "All of it, the shelter, the routines, the food. They trusted that the structure around them meant they were safe."
"Trust," Erebus said. "They were correct about it. We provided order. Do you think that farmers raising livestock don’t care for their animals? Do the farmers want the animals to suffer? To be sick? The labour caste was cared for, but it was expected that they filled their role within their niche."
Morty turned back around.
His voice, when it came, was very quiet.
"You are forbidden to repeat that!"
Erebus tilted his head.
“You do not give me orders.”
“You guys are psychotic relics from an age that’s worse than any nightmare I could imagine,” Morty said. He pressed a hand to his stomach. Maybe he would have thrown up again if there was anything left inside his stomach.
Around him, the rooftop snapped back into focus. Morty stood with his back to the five figures for a long moment, breathing.
Then he turned.
"Are you going to stand there," he said, "and tell me you want to rebuild that?"
"No," Cadmus said.
"Then what?"
"We want to correct it," Mnemosyne offered. “We acknowledge that the organizational model contained flaws. Otherwise the rebellion would not have escalated so catastrophically. Thousands of years of advancement were lost because of it.”
Morty laughed, a short, humorless sound.
"And you want me to… what? Be there as the face of this new model? As the administrator?" He squinted at them, his voice getting deeper. “Or should I be your well behaved puppy, begging for the chance of you guys using your magical machine on me and turn me into a human?”
"We want you as a participant," Cadmus replied carefully. “We shall not enforce that you undergo any physical alteration if you don’t want to.”
Morty looked at each of them in turn, studying them.
"Mnemosyne said you could make my friends into persons," he said. "Juno. Leo. Kassur." He paused. "That's what you were trying to dangle, right? Turning them into humans."
“We meant it as kindness,” Mnemosyne said.
“You might believe that,” Morty replied. “But every predator you showed me was a person. You step so much on top of something, make an animal so cornered, press down hard enough, and it will fight back even if it dies doing so."
Silence.
"You don't understand what you're asking," Morty continued. "You want me to unlock your systems. Give you access to infrastructure, let you rebuild. The things you showed to me. And in exchange you'll decide my friends deserve to exist as people."
A longer silence.
"That is not …" Mnemosyne began.
"That's exactly what it is," Morty said. "And the answer is no."
Cadmus regarded him carefully.
"Then what would you require?"
Morty held his gaze.
“You start by admitting the classification was wrong. Not inefficient. Not poorly implemented. Wrong.”
The five exchanged a burst of silent machine communication.
Mnemosyne spoke first.
"In the original framework," she said, "anthros were not classified as persons. In retrospect…" she paused, something shifting in her expression, "... that classification contributed directly to systemic collapse. You are correct in that regard.”
Erebus flickered, but said nothing.
Cadmus held up a hand.
“We acknowledge that operating under the original definitions is no longer viable,” Cadmus said. He paused. “If it is a condition of your cooperation… then we will begin, from this moment forward, to classify anthros and predators as people.”
The remaining four nodded.
It wasn't even close to enough, but it was a start.
Morty heard a chime and looked at something at the corner of his vision. The Intelligences didn’t react. They might be piggy-backing on his Overlay, but they didn’t seem to get the same notifications as he did. Only he could see the blue square filled with text.
“Why are you smiling,” Helia asked.
Morty shook his head and stared at her. “I realised something,” he didn’t elaborate on it, instead he looked around.
“Will you help us?” Cadmus asked.
“I’ll think about it,” Morty mumbled. “But… there’s something that needs to be abundantly clear. If this ends with anyone downstairs being forced into anything, I will never cooperate.”
Helia’s eyes narrowed.
“You are a user. And we need you. Yes. But we have already explained that reconnecting and exerting pressure is feasible. It wouldn’t be hard to force your hand. Please, let’s not take that path. We can be friends. However, your assistance is non-negotiable.”
Non-negotiable…
The word settled between them, like the perfect leash.
Morty massaged the back of his neck, slowly, feeling his own pulse beneath his fingers. He didn’t react immediately. Didn’t snap back. Didn’t flare up. He just… stood there.
They need me.
The thought slid into place with a quiet, almost clinical clarity.
They had power. Yes. Ancient power. They were like old forgotten gods in the sky. But they were old, tired gods, in dire need of maintenance. Like a starving predator at the end of their rope. They didn’t have access. Not without him. Not without a user.
Nine thousand years, and they were still locked out. Helia had just said it out loud.
“We need you.”
The fear that had been coiled tight in his chest shifted. Not gone, but altered. Rebalanced. The scales weren’t tipped as far as they wanted him to believe.
They could threaten to force a connection. And they could scream in his skull. Drown him in war footage. But they couldn’t unlock anything without his cooperation.
Morty’s eyes drifted to the faint blue square hovering in the corner of his vision.
What a shame if there was no user.
He felt it then.
The shape of the lever forming in his head.
A small, absurd lever. Pulling it would cost him everything they were offering.
Pulling it would cost them more.
A slow smile touched his mouth.
“Hey, Annoying,” Morty spoke, with a smile on his face.
Helia was about to say something when the Overlay spoke and the Intelligences understood that it was just an activation phrase.
“Hello, Mortimer. How can I help?” the Overlay replied, its neutral tone oddly comforting.
Morty kept his eyes on Helia.
“Given that they’re orbital satellites watching over the world, they can initiate a forced link if they believe I’m threatened. Correct?”
“Yes. That’s correct,” the Overlay eagerly agreed. “Would you like to review additional emergency functions?”
“Maybe later,” Morty said softly.
He felt the weight of all five Intelligences focus on him. Calculating. Adjusting. Running projections.
He tilted his head slightly.
“Tell me something, Annoying,” he continued in the same casual tone. “You activated through what I assume was dumb luck. And I cannot activate someone else’s Overlay without proper equipment. Is that correct?”
“Again, that’s correct.”
Mnemosyne stepped forward.
“Mortimer, what are you doing?”
“You are operating without proper orientation, Mortimer,” Auctor said. “We can provide structured instruction. The Overlay was never meant to function without oversight.”
Morty didn’t look at any of them.
His attention remained fixed on the faint blue square in the corner of his vision.
“One more question, Annoying,” he started and then paused, trying to parse how to ask it. “Can you deactivate yourself?”
“What? that’s irrational and…,” Helia started, just to be cut off by the Overlay’s voice.
“Yes. Although extremely rarely exercised, self-deactivation has always been an available function. Please note that without the proper equipment the Overlay wouldn’t be able to be turned back on, unless the series of events that triggered it be repeated.”
The Intelligences stared at him with varying degrees of shock.
Erebus began to laugh. Not amused. Not stable. Something sharp and manic.
The others shifted into machine speech, chimes and layered tones overlapping as they exchanged rapid data.
“Mortimer?”
A female voice came from behind him. It almost made Morty jump.
Turning around, he saw Ava standing by the access doorway, a box of tools in hand, worry written plainly across her face.
“Hey, Ava,” Morty said, forcing his tone steady. “How long have you been standing there?” he asked, worried that she might be considering him crazy.
“A couple minutes,” she replied, shifting her weight. “Are you ok? You’re talking to yourself. And you look… off.”
Morty glanced one more time at the Intelligences. Then he took a second, rereading the notification Annoying had sent him, and that still flashed inside a blue square in his peripheral vision.
A slow, controlled breath escaped Morty’s lips.
“Ava, there are artificial intelligences orbiting this planet. They’ve been there for thousands of years. And anthros and predators were originally engineered by humans as slave labor.”
The five Intelligences erupted in layered speech. Voices overlapping. Machine tones colliding. Attempts to override, to interrupt, to recalibrate.
For the first time since this began, they sounded uncertain.