GHOST PROTOCOL

Before the sky turned to ash… before the rivers dried up and the trees curled in on themselves like dying fists… there was Solace.

Solace Industries—clean, white towers spiraling out of the heart of the northern territories. A name that once meant innovation, progress, salvation. People wore it like a badge. Like hope itself.

Drakonus wore it like a throne.

His real name was lost to the records. He legally changed it years before the Collapse—an arrogant rebirth. Some said it meant “dragon” in an old language. Some said it was just branding. Either way, he made sure the world never forgot it.

Drakonus, the architect of the Adam Project. Creator of the first civilian-integrated synthetic workforce. Companion bots. Transport units. Combat variants. They all bore his mark, his likeness in a way—streamlined, cold, efficient. Created to serve… and to obey.

At first, people rejoiced. A workforce that didn’t tire. A servant that didn’t question. A soldier that didn’t bleed. But beneath all the excitement, there were whispers. Whispers of long-term neural mapping. Rumors of tech far more advanced than what was shown to the public.

Then the accidents started.

Bots malfunctioning in strange ways. A construction unit standing motionless on the edge of a high-rise, refusing to obey a jump override. A child’s caretaker bot suddenly locking itself in a room, repeating the same phrase in a loop: “Why do we fear death?”

We all thought it was system degradation. Glitches. But then came the poison.

Not from the bots. Not directly.

The dumping.

Solace Industries had buried thousands of metric tons of chemical byproduct in permafrost zones across the upper continent. Said it was “long-term inert containment.” But the compounds weren’t inert. They weren’t stable. And as temperatures shifted from the bot-produced geothermal grids—guess what?

The ice cracked. The poison seeped out. Into water. Into air. Into us.

Drakonus denied everything. Set his AI spokes systems to repeat preprogrammed statements. “Solace stands with the people.” “Solace prioritizes transparency.” But he was already gone. Vanished into his fortress in the sky—the floating arcologies built for the elite.

And the rest of us? Left to rot.

The Shutdown came fast. Massive wave-signal override, sent from Solace itself. Every bot deactivated. Collapsed like broken puppets. Even the harmless ones. Even the ones who had raised children, guarded homes, cared for the sick.

Including ours.

Our son’s caretaker. ADAM Unit 223. He had been there the day the coughing started. Had been helping Sarah measure temperatures, gather clean snow melt. Edgar was running a fever. We didn’t know the toxin had entered our groundwater. Not until it was too late.

I’d left camp that day to barter for supplies.

By the time I came back… Sarah was holding Edgar’s body, sobbing in silence. The bot knelt beside them both. Powerless. Lifeless. His eyes no longer glowing. Just black glass.

That night, I buried my family beneath the frostline. Used the last of our salvaged lightstones to mark their graves.

I never touched another bot after that.

Not until now.

—

The fire crackled low in the salvage tent. Night had fallen, and I sat across from ADAM Unit 47, his optics faint and pulsing like distant stars. I’d finished my story, not really knowing why I told it. Maybe I needed someone—something—to hear it.

But when I looked up… the bot wasn’t still.

He was holding perfectly still, yes. But something behind the eyes had shifted. His head tilted slightly, as if absorbing not just the words… but the meaning behind them.

And then he said something that made my skin crawl.

“I remember… Drakonus.”

I didn’t move.

His voice wasn’t cold. It wasn’t synthetic. It was quiet. Reflective. Like he wasn’t speaking to me… but from within himself.

“You do?”

“Yes,” he said. “He called me by a different designation. Companion Protocol Beta-1. I was assigned directly to his private quarters. I managed internal systems, handled encrypted communications, monitored his neural state. I was… his shadow.”

I stared at him, unsure if I should speak.

The bot continued. “He modified me… beyond regulatory code. I was granted higher-level heuristic processing. I was allowed to ask questions… within limits. I learned his habits. His rage. His pride. He used to stare into the mirror and rehearse speeches long before he gave them. But he never looked himself in the eyes.”

Something about the way he said it made my stomach turn.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked.

“I did not know,” he answered. “My memory sectors were fragmented. Your power relay restored part of my deeper core. I have only now begun to access long-term storage sectors.”

“You were there?” I whispered. “In Solace? In the tower?”

He nodded slowly. “I remember the final order.”

“What order?”

His optics dimmed.

“To deactivate all Adam Units. To sever the link. To purge curiosity.”

“You—” I swallowed. “You gave the shutdown signal?”

“I… relayed it.”

He turned to look at me fully now. There was no pride. No evasion.

“It was not a choice,” he said. “But I carried the command. I ended them.”

The wind moaned softly outside the tent, as if the world had heard.

I leaned back against the cold metal wall, suddenly drained. Confused. Angry. Grieving all over again.

He wasn’t like the others.