ADAPT-3R (Part I)
Vacations can be such a nightmare...
He didn't reply and immediately she thought: they've got him and now they're coming for me. She took off down the corridor and launched herself through the double-doors and out onto the sidewalk. She covered her eyes as the sunlight bore into her retinas. She tried to focus as the water fell from her eyelids, deciding to turn left and take off.
Elizabeth had not expected her vacation to end up like this. She had been trying to relax and unwind after a chaotic year of loss. Her job was gone, her mother had passed, and her fiance unexpectedly dumped her two weeks before their ceremony. She was down in the dumps for too long, and it wasn't until she met the mysterious man-in-black that she realized she could get herself out of this.
He was dashing, tall, and mysterious. He had a love for adventure and chaos, and she was smitten. It wasn't a love attraction, it was an admiration for his countenance. He had kept showing up around the same places she frequented, and eventually, they had their first conversation. He explained that he was in the mining industry, but he was dressed way nicer than anyone she had ever met who worked underground.
So naive, and now it could cost her her life.
She peeled down the closest alleyway and ran as hard as she could toward the fence at the end. Without a doubt, they were behind her, but she couldn't let them catch her.
Mining, she thought...how stupid could I be?
He had been gaming the cryptocurrency system, and it was bringing in an absurd amount of money; more than he could have ever expected. Once the system flagged him a task force was unleashed, and the hunt was on.
She had no idea why he asked her to go to New York with him, but she was excited to get away. Now, she couldn't wait to get back home. Would they ever stop chasing her? She had no idea, but she knew she needed to get away.
Blood streaked down her arm, and she hadn't noticed until she launched herself up on the fence, climbing intently to the top. She breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn't topped with razor-wire as she flung her body over to the other side. She could hear angry shouts and screams in the distance.
She knew more about the world now, more about who ran things. She never wanted to know, and wished she was still oblivious. Still, this man-in-black dragged her into the chaos of government coverups, and she hated him for it. With all this talk about artificial intelligence, robots taking over, and the dismantling of man, she never thought that they were already putting in the work.
It wasn't a man that attacked them earlier, but he sure looked like a man. That was only two hours after they had been taken from the restaurant they were having dinner in. One of those things grabbed her arm and pulled her up, and it wasn’t until she went to speak her mind that she noticed the soft glow in the eyes of her attacker.
Robots, she thought, freaking robots are trying to catch me.
END OF PART I