Douglas led me into a thin hallway flooded with light and murmuring voices. The floors were sterile, with the ceiling too high to reach without a ladder. There were rooms every few feet, their doors open. I peeked inside a few and saw cots surrounded by LEDs, like the one I'd just come from.

The voices didn't come from those. They came from a large room at the end of the hall, where I saw the backs of people and excited, waving hands. One man looked at another, then pointed at a screen overhead. The man who listened rolled his head and growled in frustration.

I wondered if it was Roger and me that had been the topic of discussion.

"As you can see, you've still got all of your electronics. Your clothes were changed after we..."

He paused, looking back at me as I followed closely. I looked back at him, eyebrows raised. I wanted him to finish his sentence. Your clothes were changed after we tried to cut you open. Yeah, that's what he should've said.

"If you haven't noticed yet..." He shook his finger weakly as he pointed at my head. "We've done no damage to your receptor. Roger is still intact."

Oh, I noticed. If I hadn't, and I awoke to find Roger non-functioning, I don't know what I would have done. "So, you know... that I know?"

Douglas paused for a second, keeping his gaze dead ahead at the room with its lively group. In my ear, though I knew he meant to keep quiet, I heard Roger groan as quiet as he could, "He doesn't know, Clara..."

"Know what?" Douglas shifted his head slightly, looking at me with just one eye. "Our intentions with the Hosts? With you?"

My mouth hung open and sounds left me, but none were intelligible. It hadn't been a full five minutes and I'd already cooked my goose—that was the saying, right?

"I figured he'd known what we were up to, considering he damaged two of my computers in the process."

What? He didn't tell me that.

"Quite the machine you have there. Utterly devoted to you and your life. It seems like... some traits can't be forgotten when it comes to those... things."

The way he spoke held a hidden agenda; I knew it. What did he mean by traits? Was this what Roger meant when they thought I'd broken him? Made him completely accessible? I'd seen what jailbroken devices could do.

With a slow spin, Douglas motioned for me to pass him and into the room of animated conversation. "If you had the time, I'd love to know how you freed him."

Freed?

I passed his outstretched hand as I entered the room and allowed the warmth of conversation to wrap around me. It reminded me of the restaurants, the cafes; a room full of life, laughter, and heated debate. Like Roger had said, there were twenty or so. Ten of them sat at computers, looking up at the monitors that hung on the wall. The rest were grouped around the table, pointing at one another. Except, when I walked in, the conversation stopped, and my gaze scanned over the curious faces that looked at me with normal, human eyes.

"Just so we're clear, Clara, you're safe here."

Douglas' voice caught my attention as he walked past me and approached the table. I looked into his eyes when he faced me again. "It's normal to have doubts. Human to have them. Being on your own for nearly two months is..."

Had it been that long? With everyone's eyes on me, I felt naked. I wrapped my arms around myself to feel safe. "I wasn't alone." My thumbs slid over my skin. "Roger has been with me the whole time."

The murmurs I'd heard out in the hall returned, only this time, I heard them far too clear:

"She doesn't know?"

"Maybe he is in control."

"No, he isn't, she's tapped into him. She's got to know."

"Clara." Douglas went around two of the men at the front of the table and pulled a chair from behind them. With one quick push, he moved it towards me and silently told me to sit with a wave of his hand. When I did, he continued. "You've had no real human contact."

Human contact. Real human contact. The look in his eyes said there was more to what he'd said; the whispers from his resistance solidified it. What were these rebels hiding? And why did they need me alive to get it?

"I'm just as human as you are." My heart went still at the sound of Roger's voice, and not because he spoke, but how he did. His voice wasn't in my ear, or in my watch; his words shot out from the speakers connected to their computers. The screens overhead went black. It took me a second to realize that the static I'd normally hear in my ears was gone.

Because Roger was gone.

"Sir?" A woman at the far end of the room jumped up from her seat as each of the screens went white, then gray; the colors swirled together until a light silhouette came on display. It was when the translucent shadow developed features, and those features formed the expression that always made me laugh, that I pushed my chair back just an inch to give the room space to breathe.

Roger appeared on their screens, grinning ear to ear. When no one spoke to him, he turned his eyes on Douglas. "You." He nodded his head once. "Is your name Douglas?"

Douglas had already rushed over to the computers, his fingers rapidly banging on keys with no results. He barked orders at two of the people in his crew, though neither knew what to do. They looked at one another, before looking at me, and I had to admit, the confused looked on their faces was worth Roger's obvious showing off. That's what they got for whispering and keeping secrets from me.

"Clara." Roger's gaze lifted to look at me. "I think he's deaf."

"Maybe." I covered my mouth to hide my giggle.

Finally giving up, Douglas moved away from the computers and into the shoulder of one of his men. "How... how is this possible? Our firewalls were built to keep out the Province." He looked back at me, his eyes wide before he looked at the chocolate woman who tugged at her own curls, baffled. "Erica, how? How is this possible? Where are the alarms? The warnings? He's just—"

"Here?" Roger slid his hand over his neck and though his image fizzled out for a moment, his devilish grin was clear as ever. "Haven't you figured out by now that Clara and I are a little bit different."

"A little?" Douglas had no choice but to fall back into a chair. "How much free will did she allow you to have?"

Sitting in a room filled with bewilderment gave me a mixture of relief and anxiety. I couldn't help but think Roger was right, and I could continue to pretend that I knew what I'd done to him, purposely freeing him on my own. That was my relief. The anxiety? These rebels thought they knew what they were messing with, but Roger was on an entirely different level; he confused them, scared them, and here I was, really uncertain of what or who he really was.

"He's too free," a deep voice said beside me. Looking up, I followed the outline of a body too large to be a normal man, but he was. And judging by the way he stood—deep in a scowl with furious eyes—this was Matthews, the same man who kicked me in the face.

Blinking up at him, I took in a deep breath to relieve the pressure that settled on my chest.

"Someone's sittin' here or..." Matthews eyes glanced down at a chair just a foot away from mine. Unsure, because I'd only gotten here a minute before he did, I shrugged. He took that as a go-ahead and dropped down on it.

Seeing the seriousness on his face, I assumed he'd stay quiet and listen to the commotion that went on in the room; instead, he looked at me and said, "Sorry 'bout your face."

My mouth dropped. Was that his apology? Here I was, parts of my head blue and all he could say was sorry 'bout your face? If he weren't three times my size...

"Roger, is it?" Douglas' broke my thoughts as he stood from his chair and approached the many monitors' Roger appeared on. He looked from one to another; Roger's eyes followed him each way he moved. "How is this possible? What did she do to you? Your programming was bound to a central core, which means unless she had Government credentials, allowing your Code to roam this freely is damn near impossible."

Roger cocked a brow as he glanced around the room before allowing his eyes to land on me. I swallowed my nerves. Why would it be impossible?

"Erica." Douglas waved his hand at the curly-haired woman. "Can you run diagnostics on his VF data?"

"I can't..." she muttered, dropping down into the chair behind her.

"She can't." Roger shrugged on screen.

"Clara." Douglas turned back at me, lifting his brow high. "Can you tell me how you did this?"

"Well, I—" I don't know.

I only assumed the interrogation would begin now that Roger was out in the open. The questions, though unspoken, hovered in the air with silent voices. The words came out from the gazes of curious eyes. I tried to look at each of their faces and mentally decipher their hesitation with my own quiet answers, but the pressure was on. I felt red in the face; my body heat through the roof.

And Roger saw this. "Clara," he spoke just to me, his whisper hitting my ear like a tender touch. "Relax, okay? It's all right."

I locked onto his face, taking in slow breaths. "But I..." I started to say.

"You?" Douglas faced me fully and placed his hands behind his back. "You what? What did you do?"

"Clara..." Roger's eyes glowed brightly as he looked at me. His hand slid over the back of his neck. That uneasiness I felt... did he feel it? He looked like he did.

"You gonna answer the man or what?" Matthews shot me a side glance. "Or, are you gonna just stare at us like we're stupid?"

Stupid. Oh, no. Clearly, they were. The rebels had no idea who they were messing with. "No, I'll answer him." I sat up straight and cocked a brow with confidence. "But I have my own questions first."

"Oh?" Douglas straightened. "Questions?"

"Yes, I do." I nodded and scanned the curious group before me. "For one, how do you not know how he works? Wouldn't that be basic information? You, you, and you." I pointed to Douglas and two random people. "Why aren't you under the control of your VF? Didn't you make them dormant?"

Beside me, Matthews snorted. He slid his hand over his short, curly hair, then down the stubble around his chin. When I looked at him directly, I was met by green eyes and an exaggerated smile. "We—" He pointed at everyone in the room. "—don't got no assistant." After, he tapped the scar behind his ear. I hadn't noticed it was larger than normal. "We had ours ripped out years ago. Douglas here told us the truth."

"The truth?" I whispered.

"Yup." He nodded. "Good thing too, 'cause shit, boss here was right."

Right? I looked towards Douglas, who seemed eager to answer. "What were you right about?"

Common sense told me boss would answer, but his right-hand took the charge. Matthews' voice made me jump. He pointed at Roger's frustrated face on the screen. "That assistant program? Them VFs are bad things. See, you and me, we supposed to be normal. Be human. But leave it up to them up there at Province Headquarters to fuck up a simple thing."

A simple thing... what he said reminded me of my mother, the advocate for all things simple. I could imagine her now coming up behind him to give him a hug and say, thank you. Me? I couldn't thank him for the information yet. The plot holes were so deep, if I looked inside them and called out, my echo would respond.

Douglas cleared his throat before sliding his hand over the top of his head. "I was on the team that created the original receptor in 2079. This tiny device—" He reached into his back pocket to pull out the receptor that looked like my mother's. "—was developed for the greater good of our surviving nations. The idea made sense. I devoted all of my extra time to its creation."

I watched as he placed the small receptor on the table in front of him. With a flip of his finger, he gave it a twist. "Clara, when I tell you there was a point in time when the province had all of my support, believe it as truth. I would do anything for my nation. I would die for it. But when word went out that the receptors would become implants, and those would be enforced by law... I couldn't agree with it."

Turning slowly on his foot, he looked up at the screens. Roger's image faded out slightly as he looked away. Unphased, Douglas continued. "Perhaps you understand why I dipped far away from the Province when they announced this voice, this personality. There are too many secrets behind a VF's smiling face. Too much dirt under the Province's sterile fingers. Here at Peace," Douglas looked back at me and everyone around him, "we want to uncover that truth. Free us from them."

The last words he said left me on the edge of my seat—literally. My toes were pressed firmly into the floor; my hands gripped my legs. My knees bounced so hard, my teeth chattered. "What's r-really going on?" I asked.

"How could you not know?" Douglas lowered his head. He gave Erica a quick glance before quietly instructing her to shut down the computers. Before the screens went black, I caught Roger's fearful gaze one more time. After, it was just static, and the low echo of his apology in my ear.

"I'm sorry."

"They're replacing us, Clara." I hadn't noticed Douglas approached me until his hand touched my shoulder. "Our minds with theirs. Think of it like this... every citizen held captive by the computers that run our world. Does it make sense now?"

♦

It made sense, every part of it did. The computers, the programs, the VFs and their hypersensitive, ultra-revealing personalities. They looked and felt like humans because they were built to be humans. I'd always known that the Province went to the extremes to make us perfect within their society, but to completely replace us.

How ridiculously insane.

We were the 'Hosts' to the 'Codes.' We were prisoners in our own Utopia. And Roger...he knew, there was no way he couldn't have known. The fact that Douglass, Matthews, and everyone looked at me like I was lying only proved it. Roger felt human because he was supposed to be me.

And yet... he wasn't. He saved me, protected me. Was it because he needed my body? My brain? If I'd died or fallen victim to another Host, he would have lost his chance, right?

Leave it up to Rebels to change my thoughts in just a matter of seconds, because in the days that followed, Roger and I avoided each other. Normally, it'd be hard to do—considering, you know, he was in my head. But the second Douglas revealed the truths to me, Roger had gone quiet. He apologized in the conference room, once more before I'd gone to sleep, but after:

Silence.

I hadn't let it bother me because Peace took up my time. Matthews took it upon himself to give me a tour and having forgiven his initial approach at human conversation, I let him. Wandering the halls, I explored the rooms open to me. He explained where I was, though a part of me should've guessed. The walls were tall, but at the very top, dipped in and curved, like a dome.

Peace hid their group within the old domes that bordered the city; the very same structures that housed the military during the last war. The insides were powered by out-of-date technology, making it easy for them to monitor the city without exposure.

What surprised me more than their rebel group, or their plans, was that there were more of them. Peace were rebels because they opposed the Province, on both sides; there were groups here in New Chicago, Old New York, and Ohio, as well as London, France, and parts of Old Italia. Maybe I was naive, but the idea that there was more than one rebellion surprised me. For the longest I thought I'd been the only non-controlled human alive... and yet, there were so many.

Matthews left it up to Erica to educate me on the truth, versus what I was taught to believe. Rebels were never bad. They fought for equality, for justice. Freedom. The Province preached the words that started the war; they took credit for what 'rebels' fought to achieve.

Talking with the two of them, I realized that I agreed with Peace's ideas; they were much like my mother's. Humans were better off without being so dependent on technology. From the inside, it felt like we were given the ultimate access to the world, but really, we were blind to our chains. Every move we made, word we said—every email, login, and video call—was meant to be monitored. Now, with the help of virtually created humans, they could control our every move.

Who was I to stop Peace from trying to destroy that?

Deep down, I cared for Roger. Truly. But standing outside of my prison, I knew the truth, and I wouldn't let him suck me in anymore.