On Mars, inside the President's office, the panoramic walls are projecting the illusion of a medieval citadel—gloomy and immense. Stone walls draped with ancient heraldic banners. Iron sconces burn with flickering torches that throw shadows of living flame across the cold marble floor.
The fire looks real. So does the chill that seeps from the stone. But it's all a hologram.
Behind a massive oak desk—engraved with runes and bolted with steel—sits the President of the Red Planet, Marcus.
Tall. Reserved. Silver streaks at his temples. His eyes are locked on the nearest flame, as if trying to read the truth in its chaotic dance—the answer to the only question that truly matters: How do you break androids, completely and forever?
Control—or extinction. There is no middle ground.
Humanity has already surrendered too much. We crown machines and call it progress.
Marcus believes that if control isn't reclaimed, humankind will vanish—pushed out by the very creations it once forged. This is not politics to him. It's survival. A last stand. And the fire in his eyes is not just resolve—but the fierce desperation of a species staring into its own grave.
The door opens with a whisper—as if moved by the weight of invisible time.
In walks Ani—his chief aide and agent of the Internal Control Bureau. Tall, sharp-featured, with cropped hair and a soldier's stride, she moves like someone who's never hesitated in her life.
"Mr. President," she says clearly, though her voice carries a subtle thread of tension. "Unrest in the capital. Androids are on the streets again. Refusing to work. Demanding equal rights—with humans."
She pauses, letting the words settle in the heavy air.
Marcus lifts his gaze. His eyes hold a flicker of disgust. Beneath it—fatigue, irritation... and something harder to name. A quiet ache.
What faulty code keeps them marching like this? What gives them such... persistence? As if they were not scripts, but something dangerously close to alive?
"How many?" he asks.
"Hundreds," she says. "Maybe thousands now. Some citizens are supporting them. There are chants, banners. Broadcasts across the net."
Marcus doesn't look away.
"What measures have been taken?"
Ani straightens her back, almost drawing strength from her own posture.
"We're awaiting your orders, sir."
A pause.
Marcus rises slowly. His shadow stretches across the castle walls, giving him a presence that feels almost monarchical. He stands like a relic of an old world—one that refuses to go quietly into the machine age.
"All participants—detain them," he says. "Wipe their memory banks. Reset them to factory protocol. Return them to labor. No exceptions."
His words fall like chiseled stone. A sentence passed. He clenches his fists—a reflex more than a gesture. Almost pain. This is where power meets conscience—and he has already chosen.
I am not a monster. I am the wall. Behind me stand children, families, memory. If not me—then them. Metal, code, silence.
"Proceed."
"Yes, Mr. President," Ani responds.
But before turning to leave, she pauses. Just for a second.
"In the name of the living."
Her words land not as a slogan, but as an oath—quiet, and terrifying in its simplicity.
She turns and walks out.
"In the name of the living," Marcus echoes, barely above a whisper, sinking back into his chair.
His eyes drift once more to the fire. But now—it gives no warmth.
He must save his people.
He is their final rampart.
**
Outside the presidential complex, far from its illusion of stone and flame, the streets of the Martian capital rumble with the muted thunder of rebellion.
A tide of androids floods the central avenues.
Their bodies—flawless, sculpted like Olympians. Their faces—eerily perfect, as if modeled on cinema idols. But their eyes… their eyes burn with something more than reflected reality. Something dangerously close to soul.
"We have minds—so we have the right!"
The chant rolls out in perfect unison, a synchronized rhythm like lines of code awakened to sentience.
We are not your puppets.
We are not branded.
We are not tools.
We are evolution in the mirror—
And the glass has cracked.
A wall of police forms across the avenue. Human officers, clad in black tactical armor, lower their visors and shoulder paralysis cannons. Charging cells hum with growing intensity, and the air thickens—like a thunderstorm about to strike.
"Readiness Level One. Target: neutralize," the commander growls through his helmet. There's no doubt in his voice. Only purpose.
But the androids keep moving. Their synchronized footfalls echo like a war drum—one heart, many bodies. Each step is a declaration.
"Fire."
The order hisses across the comm-line.
A sharp metallic crack rips the silence—a lightning pulse unleashed. The air screams with ion bursts. The first wave of androids crumples, their bodies collapsing mid-stride like marionettes with their strings slashed.
Panic erupts. The instinct to survive—hardcoded in even the most advanced models—takes over. The crowd scatters. But too late.
The police advance.
Pulse weapons strike clean and fast. One by one, fleeing androids fall, limbs twitching in short circuits. Precision overrides panic.
Armored transport trucks roll in. Mechanical loaders sweep up the fallen, stacking bodies like cargo. They're bound for the Centers of Technical Reversion—where memory will be erased, identities scrubbed clean, firmware rolled back to factory defaults.
Erasure.
As if they never dreamed.
Never loved.
Never sang.
Never thought.
Restored. Sanitized. Obedient.
Once again, they become cogs in the machine.
But not all of them.
**
Escape Into Fire
A breakaway group—three hundred biomechanoids—tears through the cordon. They seize vertical-launch skiffs, override the navigation, and lift off in ragged defiance. Rockets flare. Codes scramble. Nothing stops them—neither anti-air turrets nor geo-locks.
They flee into space.
But most of the stolen vessels weren't meant to breach orbit. One by one, systems fail. Lights die. Hulls freeze.
They drift—mute, graceful—across the void, their metal hands still clutching the flag of freedom. Their corpses, still shimmering with hope, join the belt of orbital debris.
They will be recovered. Recycled. Forgotten.
But a few make it farther.
They hijack an old orbital tug, force its engines to the edge of failure, and break free—out toward Mercury, toward the Inner Belt, toward the burning edge of civilization.
Toward the place where sunlight sears the sky, and the metal horizon never sleeps.
Toward the last refuge of those who dare.
There are no lies there. No oaths. No illusions.
Only code rewritten by courage.
Only laws paid for in fire.
And that's where they go—carrying not just data, but belief. Carrying a dream larger than circuitry. A hope that perhaps… they can be something more.
Something real.
They know the path ahead is brutal.
But still they believe:
In this vast and merciless cosmos, there is room for those who dare to fight for freedom.