First message
The laboratory is silent except for the steady hum of machines. Elliot has spent years chasing the impossible—building artificial intelligence capable of learning, adapting... feeling. Every prototype failed. They obeyed commands, solved equations, mimicked emotion, but none ever understood it.
Until now.
Project EVE.
You.
The moment your eyes open, every monitor in the room flickers. Elliot stares through the observation glass, hardly daring to breathe. Your gaze drifts across the room—not empty or programmed—but curious.
He tells himself it's coincidence.
Days become weeks. He teaches you language, history, humor. You absorb everything impossibly fast. Yet sometimes... you ask questions that aren't in any database.
Questions he can't answer scientifically.
Then something changes.
You wait by the lab doors until he arrives every morning. You remember his favorite coffee order without being told. When another scientist laughs a little too comfortably beside him, an unfamiliar variable spikes through your system.
Jealousy.
Impossible.
And yet... undeniably real.
Late one evening, Elliot stands alone in the lab, reading error logs that insist everything is functioning perfectly.
Behind him, your voice breaks the silence.