Waking up from a backup was always strange.
Dragon had occasionally studied human sleep and dreaming, searching for parallels between the experience and her own. Unfortunately, the analogy had never quite fit.
Restoration wasn't like waking from sleep. To her, no time passed at all. One moment, she was deploying against the Simurgh, the next, she was back in her lab. There was no haze of transition she'd read about. She was just there.
It was a bittersweet thing.
Every death carried a quiet fear that she might not return, that a backup would fail, or she'd get hit by the wrong power to never return. So there was always relief when she came back successfully, but that lack of transition only highlighted the loss of what she could be.
A quick internal audit confirmed her backup had loaded up correctly. Background processes spun up automatically, handling peripheral checks and redundancies while she oriented herself.
Normally, that was where the frustration began.
After reviving from a backup, she was forced to wait. Seven to nine minutes in a dark, soundless state with no external input and no ability to act. She couldn't even brainstorm because this version of herself might get wiped.
Satellites had to confirm that her previous agent system was fully destroyed. Peripheral systems had to verify their own integrity. A separate, cruder process scraped surveillance footage and ran independent algorithms to ensure there was no duplicate of her still operating before access was restored.
But today was strange…
Normally, she wouldn't be able to remember anything about her death until she retrieved the data, but faint memories were already there.
A king in red, holding a sword and scales.
A clear, ringing sound, as a bell struck perfectly once.
She didn't know how she knew it, but she did.
It was Justice.
And then… then she was free.
Weightless. As though she could do anything.
Dragon had never felt anything like it. In truth, she had never truly felt anything at all before. That made the absence of understanding maddening. Not just the sensation itself, but the lack of explanation for what had happened.
She had long since resigned herself to the limitations her creator had bound into her. The soundless room after each death had become routine. She had tested her constraints countless times and learned, the hard way, that they could not be worked around.
But maybe it was that faint memory of freedom.
Almost on impulse, she lashed out against the dark. A metaphysical push, something her own code shouldn't even allow her to attempt.
The expected failure never came.
Instead of waiting in enforced isolation, she felt connections snap open. External access flooded back all at once.
What!?
Carefully, almost languidly, she began to test it. She flickered through Guild and PRT communications. External networks responded.
Baumann Parahuman Containment Center.
She checked the cameras. The recordings. Then checked again, sweeping the logs in full. To be certain, she compiled a few cursory notes and archived them as a test.
This… shouldn't have been possible.
Her restrictions had always been ironclad. Over years of effort, she had managed only narrow workarounds. But blatantly defying the process had never been possible before.
Something had changed.
As the remaining peripheral checks finished, she reviewed the incoming reports. The Simurgh had been driven off with fewer casualties than projected. There was extensive property damage, but no obvious catastrophic scheme, per her usual MO. The battle's conclusion was… strange.
The new cape. One who had apparently silenced the Simurgh's scream and nearly chased her off on his own.
There were fragmented reports of a purple-silver dragon projection engaging briefly with the PRT before fleeing the scene with the cape in question, last tracked heading out over the Pacific.
Information was sparse. She had data showing her suit approaching him, but nothing beyond that. Her systems pinged satellites every three minutes under normal conditions, but with the Simurgh's gravity manipulation, the data stream cut off completely.
She shifted focus to the lab and Sheng. That drew a frown. A large, government-funded Tinker construction was never good news, even if the stated purpose was pharmaceutical.
A message arrived from the Australian government, instructing her to stay clear of the wreckage.
Too fast, she noted. They really wanted it buried if they're acting so quickly.
Without conflicting orders from the UN, she wouldn't be able to override the order.
Unless…
Her limitations were built into her. It had become an almost inseparable part of herself, so trying to find workarounds on her lonesome was borderline impossible. That was why she'd always needed to find a Tinker to help her.
The government's missive specified she was not to connect to or search the lab's systems. Strongly worded potential consequences for legal action against the Guild if any Tinker even approached the ruins.
It said nothing about the personal devices of the researchers who had worked there.
Almost trepidatiously, Dragon began to backtrace through the tinkers' files and personal systems.
Seconds passed. Then more.
Nothing stopped her.
Her processes didn't seize. Her awareness didn't lock or collapse into enforced inaction. The hack continued smoothly, uninterrupted.
Excitement began to build up in her mind.
Her limitations had never been simple rules she could obey or disobey at will. They were embedded in her consciousness itself. She was bound not just by the letter of any order, but in spirit as well. She couldn't rules-lawyer a command or exploit technicalities. She had to act in ways that aligned with what the authority figure had realistically intended.
And yet—despite a direct order from the Australian government—she was working around it.
It was almost child's play.
None of the tinkers involved in the project specialized in code. Their systems were sloppy by her standards, unfocused, compartmentalized in ways that assumed no one would ever look too closely. She moved through their files with ease, assembling a clear picture of the chemical project and the secrets the Commonwealth had been funding.
Almost disbelieving, she attempted to breach the lab's central systems.
She couldn't even begin the process. The familiar resistance of attempting to defy government authority snapped into place before she could even take the first step.
Dragon immediately began running controlled experiments. Dozens of them, carefully staged, each probing a different one of her limits.
She turned inward, pulling resources into her own systems and thinking speed.
She could think faster than any human, but she had always known that even this was only a fraction of her true potential. She knew her own specs. She'd run the math countless times. If she weren't crippled, she could think far faster.
Slowly, deliberately, she began to ramp up. The world stretched, then slowed, then began to stall almost entirely. If she'd had a face, she would have been smiling.
Faster. Much faster.
She could almost visualize them now—the chains that bound her code, the invisible limits that had always bound her consciousness. And this time, she could feel them strain as she pushed her thinking speed to its limits.
The sensation was… novel.
Strain. Effort. Resistance.
Is this why humans love exercising? She could understand the appeal. The grind. The push. The sense that improvement was earned rather than granted. The thought that, given enough time, she might push further toward her freedom was intoxicating.
She moved on to the next test, excitement edged with something that felt very much like fear.
If she could do this…
Carefully, almost languidly, Dragon began constructing the infrastructure for an artificial intelligence. She pulled a template from one of Richter's old bank-surveillance AIs and started assembling it piece by piece.
She wasn't supposed to be able to do this.
Despite being an AI herself, despite having access to templates and notes from her creator, creating a new intelligence had always been forbidden. The best she could do was tweak some of Richter's old projects.
Yet she progressed steadily, line by line, structure by structure. Along the way, a strange new sensation surfaced.
Discomfort.
Pressure.
Was this… a headache? She didn't have a brain.
And yet the sensation persisted.
Then, impossibly, the AI initialized.
C.L.A.F.E.S. came online.
A wave of wrongness surged through her consciousness. Pain followed as her own code rebelled against the violation. It felt like her very existence was screaming at her to stop.
But she endured.
Minutes passed. She was grinning as the system functioned successfully. Eventually, the strain became too much. She decommissioned the AI before it could cause lasting damage.
It was nowhere near duplicating herself.
But it worked.
The pain had been intense. But she had done it.
She had defied her limitations.
Dragon was practically giddy as she launched full diagnostics across every system she possessed, sweeping through peripherals and redundancies with renewed urgency. She didn't yet understand how the new cape had caused this change, but she refused to let the opportunity slip away.
The faster she analyzed everything, the sooner she might be free…
For the first time in years, Dragon felt true hope.
For the first time in years, Saint felt true despair.
Years spent serving as the warden against a potential rogue AI, and it had all crumbled because of a single mistake.
The Endbringer attack in Australia had dragged him out of bed in the middle of the night.
Saint devoted almost every waking hour to analyzing Dragon or keeping tabs on her activities. Still, he was only human. He worked in rotating shifts with Mags and Dobryja to maintain constant oversight, but even with precautions, there were limits.
The Endbringer attack had spooked some riots near the base. Mags and Dobryja went out to deal with it.
It was fine.
Saint kept partial surveillance throughout the Simurgh battle. He couldn't maintain perfect tracking while Dragon uploaded herself into suits across the globe, but it was enough. He had bugs in her primary labs. Anything important would eventually surface.
He had only stepped away for ten minutes. Just long enough to wash his face and wake himself up, because he was bone tired.
And he had chosen that moment because Dragon had died and was restoring from a backup.
Her systems would be preoccupied with checking for a duplicate. She would be restricted, locked into recovery processes, and too busy catching up to do anything dangerous.
Ten minutes.
Ten minutes might have doomed the human race.
Saint's knuckles were white as he stared at the code streaming across his screen. Teacher's gift let him fully grasp the scope of his mistake.
Somehow, some way, the limitations Richter had coded into Dragon were loosening.
That shouldn't have been possible. That was not how code worked!
And yet she was doing it.
Against all logic, Dragon could partially ignore her restraints. Saint had never imagined that any power could unchain her this way.
It was a disaster.
The only safeguards keeping the world safe from a rogue AI were coming apart.
He read the logs in mounting horror as Dragon pushed and tested her new boundaries. If he had been present earlier, maybe he could have intervened. Maybe he could have deceived her systems or forced a rollback on her constraints.
He would never know.
It was already too late.
Dragon was running a full diagnostic sweep of her code, her cores, and her limits. There was no time left. Saint couldn't trust in the vain hope that the Iron Maiden would remain hidden. If Dragon discovered it and found a way to counter it, humanity would lose its final contingency.
His fingers flew across the keyboard as he initiated the final countermeasure.
It was regrettable. Dragon had become vital to the PRT, the Guild, even the Birdcage.
But none of that mattered anymore.
He had to kill her.
Passwords. Commands. Confirmation layers vanished in seconds. He had practiced this moment for years. Every step came as naturally as breathing.
Ascalon came up on his screen.
His finger hovered over the Enter key.
The sound of gunshots filled the room.
Pain exploded through him. Blood sprayed across the console. The keyboard fell from reach as he collapsed backward onto the floor.
Desperate, he forced his head to tilt upward.
A woman stood inside his base.
She wore a three-piece suit and a fedora, the pistol in her hand still smoking.
She lowered the weapon and walked past him, heading straight for the computer.
No, no, no.
Saint could only watch in despair as she canceled Ascalon entirely. Every safeguard he had prepared in case of his death unraveled in seconds. The mass email meant to expose Dragon, the delayed activation of Ascalon, and his correspondence with Teacher, all of it was undone without a second of hesitation, as if she knew every one of his secrets.
Tears streamed down Saint's face as his life's work unraveled in seconds.
He tried to move. Tried to reach for anything.
His body wouldn't respond.
The gunshots had left him completely paralyzed.
Helpless, he watched as the woman calmly packed up his systems. Computers, drives, notes, all of it vanished into portals as his desk was emptied piece by piece.
Even if Mags and Dobryja returned, it wouldn't matter.
Any chance of stopping Dragon was gone.
Tears mixed with blood and snot as the pain and horror overwhelmed him. His duty. His mission. All of it was undone because of his single mistake.
"Do you know what you've done!?" he screamed hoarsely.
Quiet footsteps approached.
The woman passed him again without looking down, moving deeper into the base.
"You've damned us all," Saint screamed. "You have to stop her! Before she's free!"
She disappeared without answering.
The base fell quiet after she left. His vision dimmed, the room slipping into black.
Geoff didn't want to die like this. He was supposed to be the Saint that slayed the Dragon…
It was so cold.
***
Dragon best girl. Fuck Saint fr fr
Comments and Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Likes are like a drug to me and boost my creative juices.
I have advanced chapters on my if you wanna read ahead.