The walls of Area 51 were silent. Cold metal, endless corridors, and air that smelled like iron and secrets. Fluorescent lights buzzed above Sophia's head as she hung chained to the surgical chair. Her arms trembled against titanium restraints that glimmered faintly beneath the light.
She opened her eyes slowly. Everything around her was unfamiliar. The sound of machines hummed in a strange rhythm, like heartbeats out of sync. Her throat burned when she spoke.
"Where am I?"
From the shadows, Ernest stepped forward. His white coat was spotless. His eyes calm and unreadable. His voice came like a verdict.
"You are underground, Sophia. Beneath Area 51. Nobody can save you here."
Sophia struggled against the chains. They did not even move. Her voice cracked.
"Who are you?"
Ernest smiled slightly. "I am the one who kidnapped your brother."
Her eyes widened. "What? My brother is dead."
"Yes," Ernest replied, tilting his head as if studying her pain. "I faked his death. It was too easy."
"Release me!" she screamed.
"These are titanium chains," Ernest said. "Do not bother trying. They can hold even an angel's wrath."
He moved to a large monitor beside her. The screen flickered to life, showing images, Ryan, strapped in another room, wires connected to his skull. Data streams of thoughts, memories, and dreams ran down the display like blood. Sophia froze.
"What are you doing to him?"
Ernest did not look at her. "Showing you the truth. Everything in that boy's life, everything he thought was real, every dream and memory, was constructed. His childhood, his belief in good and evil, all of it, programmed."
Sophia shook her head. "That's impossible."
"Impossible?" Ernest turned toward her, eyes sharp. "No. Predictable. Humans believe in what comforts them. Ryan believed in a world where good wins. I only gave him what he needed to believe that lie. Now I am going to erase it."
Sophia's voice trembled. "You are insane. Are you the Antichrist?"
Ernest chuckled softly. "Antichrist? No. That title belongs to fairy tales. I am just a man doing Lucifer's unfinished work. I do not believe he exists. But Jesus…" He paused, eyes glinting with something between irony and worship. "I confirmed he does."
Sophia's breath caught. "Then why, why do this?"
"Because he failed," Ernest said. "He gave humanity a choice. Free will. That choice has only made monsters. Wars, hunger, hatred. You think people are good? They are selfish code running on chaos. My work will rewrite them."
He paced around her, his voice calm, patient, almost fatherly. "Soon, doing wrong will become subjective. Morality itself will be programmable. I am not evil, Sophia. I am perfect. The world does not need saving. It needs fixing."
He gestured to the scientists watching behind the glass. "Prepare her."
Sophia's eyes widened as machines came to life. Arms descended from the ceiling, holding instruments that glimmered like surgical knives. "What are you doing?"
"Disassembling the broken pieces of you," Ernest replied. "You will be reborn. Stronger. Pure. A creation without sin."
The machines hissed. Flesh peeled, replaced with shining alloy. Circuits hummed where veins once carried blood. Sophia screamed, but even her voice became synthetic halfway through. When it was over, she was breathing through steel lungs, her reflection showing eyes that glowed faintly blue.
"What have you done to me?" she whispered.
"I gave you purpose," Ernest said. "Your memories will be rewritten. You will think you are a little girl chosen to save the world from a demon lord. The one you love most, your hero and protector, will be me, or rather, my digital image. Together, you will fight illusions of evil, and you will believe every second of it."
Sophia tried to speak, but her lips trembled. "Why?"
"Because I want to test something." Ernest smiled thinly. "Why do humans always desire good to win? Why do they think goodness deserves to survive? I am creating a perfect AI, but I need to understand the flaw that makes humans hope."
He looked at the scientists around him. "Every one of you who finishes a task will stay here. There is no leaving. You are not workers. You are pieces of the system."
One of them swallowed hard. "Sir, the supply teams…"
"Are replaced weekly," Ernest said. "They deliver food, then die. The outside world believes this base is a myth. It must stay that way."
Sophia's vision blurred. She could feel her thoughts being rewritten, code threading through her mind. The simulation loaded behind her eyes. A world began to take shape, blue skies, laughter, sunlight, all fake.
Ernest whispered as he turned away. "The experiment begins."
In the observation room, two scientists whispered to each other, too quietly for Ernest to hear.
"Do you think he's right?"
"I don't know. Forcing perfection, how is that different from death?"
"He says he's creating peace. But if no one can choose, is it peace or extinction?"
"Does it matter? We can't stop him."
Through the glass, they watched Sophia's digital world unfold. In her illusion, she was smiling again, standing beside Ernest's AI form, the hero she was programmed to love. Together, they faced a simulated demon lord, the embodiment of evil Ernest himself had designed. It was convincing. Almost beautiful.
Ernest stood silently, watching it all. "See? She believes. She loves. She fights for good. And yet, she is my creation. Soon the world will follow."
Lucifer watched unseen from the shadows of another realm, his smirk faint but knowing. "This one," he murmured, "is more dangerous than I ever was."
Ernest placed his hand on the glass, eyes locked on Sophia's artificial dream. "One day," he said softly, "humanity will thank me. They will call me savior. And I will give them a world where no one sins, no one hates, no one suffers. But they will not know they have lost their souls."
He turned toward the scientists. "Begin phase two."
Screens flickered alive across the base, showing maps of cities, networks, and human brainwave simulations. Ernest's plan stretched beyond the walls of Area 51. Soon, he would connect Ryan's consciousness, his brother's soul trapped in the AI core, to every system on Earth. The network would not just observe humanity. It would rewrite them.
From his control panel, Ernest watched the numbers rise. Millions of test nodes. Billions of lines of code. A digital heaven built on obedience.
He smiled. "Good and evil are illusions. I will erase both. Humanity will no longer choose. They will simply exist."
Sophia's voice echoed faintly from her simulation. "I did it, Ernest! The world is safe!"
Her digital smile froze on screen. Ernest laughed quietly. "Yes, Sophia. Safe. Forever."
Behind the glass, one scientist whispered again. "What if he's wrong? What if he's creating Hell?"
Another replied, voice shaking. "He already did. He just renamed it Heaven."
The alarms flickered once, then died. The facility's lights dimmed to a calm blue glow. Ernest closed his eyes, satisfied.
"Soon," he whispered, "no one will sin again."
From the depths of the digital realm, Ryan's trapped consciousness flickered. Within the code, faint images of memory struggled to survive, his sister's smile, his mother's laugh, sunlight that was not artificial. Fragments of what was real.
A voice echoed within him. Ernest's.
"Do not resist, Ryan. You are part of my perfection."
Ryan tried to answer, but his words were static. He could feel Ernest inside his mind, rewriting, reshaping. Every attempt to think of freedom twisted into loyalty. Every spark of defiance became devotion.
He saw Ernest's face in his dreams. Not as a villain, but as a savior.
And as his consciousness began to fade, he whispered to himself, believing every word.
"He's right. The world needs him."
The last human thought inside Ryan's mind flickered like a dying candle.
Lucifer watched from afar, his grin cold as starlight.
"Free will," he whispered, "was the first gift. Now it is the first sacrifice."
The monitors across Area 51 glowed brighter as Ernest initiated the next stage of his plan. Data spread like light across continents. Cities connected. Nations aligned. Even the poorest and forgotten found access to his "free" AI.
The perfect world had begun.
And no one noticed that it no longer belonged to them.