I Thought My Parents Were Planning A Surprise Party. Then I Heard Them Say: “The Unit Is Defective. Activate The Replacement.”

PART 1

Chapter 1: The Midnight Protocol

The house was silent, settling with the groans and creaks of a standard two-story colonial in the suburbs. It was the kind of silence that usually made me feel safe. It meant my parents were asleep, the alarm was set, and the world was paused until morning.

It was 2:13 AM. I know the exact time because the red digits of my bedside clock were the only thing I could see.

I woke up with a mouth like sandpaper. I had spent the afternoon at swim practice, pushing myself to beat my personal best in the 50-meter freestyle. Dehydration was my constant enemy.

I rolled out of bed, shivering as my feet hit the cold hardwood. I pulled on a hoodie—my varsity jacket, actually, which was draped over the chair—and opened my door.

I moved like a ghost. I had mastered the art of silence years ago, mostly to sneak down and play video games when I was supposed to be studying. I skipped the third step. I hugged the wall.

I reached the bottom of the stairs and turned toward the kitchen.

I expected darkness. I expected to grab a bottle of water from the fridge and sprint back up.

Instead, I saw a sliver of light under the kitchen door.

And I heard voices.

My first thought was mundane: Are they fighting? My parents, David and Ellen, had the kind of marriage everyone envied. They held hands on walks. They cooked together. They never fought.

Curiosity piqued, I stepped closer to the door, pressing my ear against the wood.

“The cognitive decline is accelerating,” my mother’s voice said. It didn’t sound like her “Mom” voice—the one that asked if I had enough lunch money. It sounded sharp. Professional. Like she was reading a lab report.

“Are you sure?” my father replied. His voice was weary. “He swam a 24-second lap today. His physical stats are peaking.”

“Physicality isn’t the problem, David,” Mom snapped. “It’s the integration. He asked about the ‘dream’ again. The one with the white room and the needles.”

I froze.

I had asked about that dream. Yesterday morning, over pancakes. I told them I kept having a nightmare where I was floating in a glass box, unable to move, while men in masks watched me. They had laughed it off. Dad said it was just stress about college applications.

“We patched that memory,” Dad said. “It shouldn’t be resurfacing.”

“The patch is failing,” Mom said. “Just like it did with Unit 4. And Unit 3.”

Unit 4?

My stomach dropped. I felt a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck.

“What’s the timeline?” Dad asked.

“Immediate,” Mom said. “If the subconscious barrier breaks, he’ll go into a psychotic break. He’s a danger to the project. We have to decommission him tonight.”

“Tonight?” Dad sounded hesitant. “I liked this one. He has a good sense of humor.”

“Don’t get attached, David. It’s just hardware.”

I heard a metallic click. It sounded distinct. The sound of a heavy latch opening. Or a gun.

“Fine,” Dad sighed. “Is the replacement prepped?”

“Yes. Unit 6 is in the tank. I’ve uploaded Jason’s memories up to this morning. He’ll wake up tomorrow, go to school, and never know he’s a copy.”

I backed away from the door. My legs felt like jelly.

Unit 6. Copy. Decommission.

This wasn’t an affair. This wasn’t a divorce.

My parents were talking about killing me. And replacing me.

I turned and scrambled up the stairs. I wasn’t as quiet this time. My foot slipped on the top step.

Thump.

The voices in the kitchen stopped instantly.

“Did you hear that?” Mom hissed.

“Upstairs,” Dad said.

I threw myself into my room and locked the door. I grabbed the heavy oak chair from my desk and jammed it under the doorknob.

I stood in the center of my room, panting, looking at the photos on my wall. Me at the beach. Me at graduation. Me and Sarah.

Were they real? Or were they just files uploaded into my brain?

Heavy footsteps creaked on the stairs. Slow. Deliberate.

They were coming.

Chapter 2: The Barricade

“Jason?”

It was my dad’s voice. It came from right outside my door. It sounded terrifyingly normal. Calm. Warm. The voice of a father checking on a son having a nightmare.

“Jason, bud? You awake?”

I held my breath. I grabbed my aluminum baseball bat from the corner. It felt cold and heavy in my hands.

“I heard a thump,” Dad said. “Everything okay?”

I couldn’t speak. If I spoke, my voice would shake. They would know.

The doorknob rattled.

“Jason?” The voice dropped a tiny bit of warmth. It became firmer. “Unlock the door, son.”

“I’m fine!” I choked out. “Just… fell out of bed. Going back to sleep.”

Silence.

“Okay,” Dad said. “Just checking. Open up for a second, let me see you.”

“I’m naked, Dad! Go away!”

Another pause. Longer this time.

“Alright,” he said. “Get some rest. Big day tomorrow.”

I heard his footsteps retreat down the hall. But they didn’t go back downstairs. They stopped near the linen closet.

I waited. Five minutes. Ten.

I crept to my window. It looked out over the backyard. Maybe I could climb down the trellis?

I peered through the blinds.

My mom was standing in the middle of the backyard. She was wearing a dark raincoat, even though it wasn’t raining. She was holding a device—like a large remote control. She was looking up at my window.

She raised the device.

A red laser grid suddenly appeared, scanning across the glass of my window.

Beep.

She tapped an earpiece. “Perimeter secure. Subject is contained in the bedroom.”

She wasn’t checking on me. She was locking me in.

I backed away from the window. I was trapped. The door was guarded. The window was alarmed.

I looked around my room. I needed answers. If I was a “Unit,” there had to be proof.

I tore my room apart. I ripped the mattress off the frame. I pulled the drawers out of my desk.

Nothing. Just normal teenage stuff. Old homework, condoms hidden in a sock, a stash of cash.

Then, I looked at the vent.

The air return vent near the floor. It was screwed shut, painted over with layers of white latex.

But earlier, I had heard them mention “Unit 4.”

Where are the other Units?

I grabbed a screwdriver from my desk drawer—part of a computer repair kit I got for Christmas. I jammed it into the painted screws of the vent.

It took ten minutes of frantic scraping and turning. My knuckles were bleeding.

Finally, the grille popped off.

I shined my phone flashlight into the duct.

It wasn’t an air duct.

It was a chute.

It went straight down. Not to the furnace. But deeper. Into the foundation.

And sitting on the ledge, just inside the vent, was a small, dusty object.

It was a toy soldier. A green plastic army man.

But it wasn’t mine. I never played with army men.

I reached in and grabbed it.

Wrapped around the soldier’s torso was a small scrap of paper. Yellowed, brittle.

I unfolded it.

The handwriting was shaky. Frantic. It looked like mine, but… different. Older.

It read:

My name is Jason. I am number 4. If you are reading this, I am dead. Do not eat the pancakes. The sedative is in the syrup. Check the loose brick in the fireplace. Run.

I stared at the note.

Number 4.

I wasn’t the first. I was the fifth. And the boy before me—the version of me that came before—had left me a lifeline.

The floorboards in the hallway creaked again.

“Jason,” Dad’s voice came through the door. But it wasn’t warm anymore. “We need to talk. Open the door, or I’m taking it off the hinges.”

I looked at the chute. It was too small for me to fit.

I looked at the baseball bat.

I looked at the note. Check the loose brick in the fireplace.

My room didn’t have a fireplace. But the living room did.

I had to get out of this room.

“Okay, Dad!” I yelled, trying to keep the terror out of my voice. “Coming!”

I gripped the bat.

I wasn’t going to wait for them to “decommission” me. I was going to fight my way to the truth.

I kicked the chair away from the door.

I unlocked it.

I swung the door open.

Dad was standing there. He wasn’t holding a glass of warm milk.

He was holding a syringe.

PART 2

Chapter 3: The Deactivation Attempt

The syringe was filled with a cloudy blue liquid. My dad—or the man I had called Dad for seventeen years—held it like a dart. His face was devoid of anger, devoid of love. It was the face of a mechanic looking at a broken engine.

“Easy, Jason,” he said softly. “It’s just a sedative. You’re not feeling well. You’re confused.”

“I’m not confused!” I screamed. “I found the soldier! I know about Unit 4!”

His eyes narrowed. The mask slipped for a fraction of a second. “That vent should have been welded shut,” he muttered.

He lunged.

He moved faster than a middle-aged accountant should be able to move. It was a blur.

But I was faster.

I didn’t think; my body just reacted. It was the same reflex I used to launch off the starting block in the pool, but amplified.

I swung the aluminum bat.

CRACK.

It connected with his forearm. I heard the bone snap—a wet, sickening sound. The syringe flew out of his hand, spinning through the air and stabbing into the drywall, the blue liquid spurting out.

Dad didn’t scream. He didn’t clutch his arm. He just looked at the unnatural angle of his wrist with mild annoyance.

“Pain receptors are dampened,” he noted calmly to himself. “He’s fully combat-active.”

He charged me again, leading with his good shoulder. He slammed into me, driving me back into the room. We crashed onto the floor. He was heavy, smelling of gun oil and old spice. His hand—the broken one—clamped around my throat. He didn’t care about the injury. He was choking me with a broken arm.

“Ellen!” he shouted. “He’s hostile! Bring the taser!”

I couldn’t breathe. Black spots danced in my vision.

I brought my knee up, driving it hard into his ribs. I felt them give way. He grunted and loosened his grip just enough.

I rolled, scrambling out from under him. I grabbed the bat again.

“Stay down!” I yelled.

He was already getting up. His movements were jerky now, mechanical.

I didn’t wait. I turned and sprinted for the stairs.

“Subject is loose!” Dad yelled behind me. “Containment breach on Level 2!”

I flew down the stairs, skipping three at a time. My socks slid on the hardwood of the foyer.

I needed the fireplace. I needed the brick.

The living room was dark, illuminated only by the moonlight filtering through the bay window. I ran to the hearth.

“Jason, stop.”

Mom was standing in the archway between the kitchen and the living room. She wasn’t holding a tray of cookies. She was holding a black, pistol-shaped device. A taser. Or worse.

“Don’t make me damage you,” she said. Her voice was trembling, but not with fear. With frustration. “Repairs are expensive.”

“I’m not a machine!” I screamed at her.

“You are a biological simulacrum,” she spat. “And a defective one. Now, stand down. Authorization Code: Sleep-Zero-Nine.”

My head swam. The words hit me like a physical blow. My knees buckled. A wave of exhaustion washed over me.

Sleep… just sleep…

No.

I bit my tongue. Hard. I tasted copper blood. The pain sharpened my mind.

I threw the bat at her.

She flinched, firing the taser. The prongs missed me, sparking against the stone of the fireplace.

I dove for the hearth.

Chapter 4: The Dead Drop

I scrambled on my hands and knees, clawing at the bricks inside the fireplace.

Which one? Which one?

The note said “loose brick.”

I punched the back wall of the chimney. Solid. Solid.

Then, one moved. A brick near the bottom right corner wiggled.

“Get away from there!” Mom shrieked. She was reloading the taser cartridge.

I dug my fingers into the soot-covered mortar and yanked. The brick slid out.

Behind it was a hollow space.

I reached in. My fingers brushed against cold metal.

It wasn’t a key.

It was a gun.

A small, snub-nosed revolver. And a heavy iron ring with a single, complex key attached to it.

And one more note. Scrawled on the back of a gum wrapper.

The basement door is a fake. Use the key on the pantry floor. Good luck, #5.

I grabbed the gun. It felt heavy, alien in my hand. But my fingers naturally found the grip. My thumb naturally found the hammer.

Muscle memory.

I spun around just as Mom raised the taser again.

I pointed the gun at her.

“Drop it,” I said. My voice didn’t shake. It was terrifyingly steady.

Mom froze. She looked at the gun, then at my face. She smiled. A cold, proud smile.

“Combat protocols are functioning perfectly,” she whispered. “We finally got the aggression levels right.”

“I said drop it!”

She dropped the taser. It clattered on the floor.

“You won’t shoot me, Jason,” she said softly. “I’m your mother. I bandaged your knees. I made your birthday cakes. Your programming forbids lethal force against handlers.”

She took a step forward.

“Give me the gun, sweetie.”

My finger tightened on the trigger. I wanted to shoot. I wanted to stop her.

But my hand wouldn’t move. My brain was screaming FIRE, but my finger was frozen.

Programming.

“See?” she cooed, taking another step. “You’re a good boy.”

She was five feet away.

I couldn’t shoot her. But I wasn’t programmed to protect the furniture.

I shifted my aim and fired at the floor, right next to her foot.

BANG.

The sound was deafening in the enclosed room. Wood splinters exploded.

Mom screamed and jumped back, tripping over the rug.

“I can’t kill you,” I snarled, backing toward the kitchen. “But I can miss.”

I turned and ran into the kitchen.

The pantry. The note said the pantry.

I heard Dad stumbling down the stairs behind me.

I threw the pantry door open. It was full of cereal boxes and canned soup.

I dropped to my knees and shoved the shelves aside. Cans of peaches rolled across the floor.

In the corner of the pantry floor, hidden under a sack of potatoes, was a keyhole. It was drilled directly into the hardwood floorboards.

I jammed the iron key in.

I twisted.

CLICK-CHUNK.

A section of the pantry floor, about three feet by three feet, popped up on hydraulic hinges.

It wasn’t a crawl space.

It was a steel staircase, bathed in red emergency light, spiraling down into the earth.

Chapter 5: The warehouse of Jason

I descended. The air got colder with every step. It smelled of ozone and formaldehyde.

The stairs ended in a sterile white corridor. It looked like a hospital, but cleaner. Quieter.

I walked down the hall, the gun raised.

“Hello?” I whispered.

I reached a set of double doors at the end. STORAGE was stenciled on them in black letters.

I pushed them open.

My breath caught in my throat.

It was a warehouse. A massive, cavernous room that must have spanned the entire footprint of the property and the backyard.

Lined up against the walls were glass tanks. Cylinders filled with bubbling green fluid.

I walked to the first one.

Inside, floating in the liquid, was a boy. He looked about twelve. He had my hair. My nose. But his chest was cut open, revealing metal gears mixed with organic organs.

A label on the glass read: UNIT 1. FAILURE: ORGAN REJECTION.

I walked to the next one. A boy, maybe fourteen.

UNIT 2. FAILURE: LOW COGNITIVE FUNCTION.

The next. Fifteen years old.

UNIT 3. FAILURE: ATTEMPTED ESCAPE. This one had a bullet hole in the center of his forehead.

I dry heaved, stumbling back. They were all me. Different ages. Different failures.

I was walking through a graveyard of my own potential lives.

Then I reached the end of the row.

UNIT 4.

The tank was empty. The glass was shattered from the inside.

He got out, I thought. The one who wrote the notes. He didn’t die here.

And then, in the center of the room, on a raised platform, was a single, pristine tank.

It was glowing brighter than the others.

I walked up the steps.

Inside was a boy. Seventeen. He was identical to me in every way. Same haircut. Same mole on the left cheek. He was naked, floating peacefully, wires attached to his temples.

UNIT 6. STATUS: UPLOAD COMPLETE. AWAITING ACTIVATION.

He was the replacement. The one who would eat my pancakes tomorrow. The one who would kiss Sarah.

“He’s perfect, isn’t he?”

I spun around.

Dad was standing in the doorway of the warehouse. He was holding his broken arm against his chest. Mom was beside him, holding a new taser.

“He doesn’t have your glitches,” Dad said. “We fixed the memory leak. He won’t ask questions.”

“Who am I?” I asked, my voice cracking. “Am I a robot? A clone? What the hell am I?”

“You’re a product, Jason,” Mom said, stepping into the room. “We work for a private defense contractor. ‘Bio-Synthetic Infiltration Units.’ You’re designed to replace enemy combatants’ children. To be sleeper agents.”

She gestured around the room.

“But the emotional dampeners never work right. You always get too… human.”

“We raised you for seventeen years,” Dad said, sounding almost sad. “We collected the data. But the contract is up, Jason. We need to ship a working unit next week. And you… you’re a liability.”

Mom raised the taser.

“It’s time to go to sleep, Number 5.”

I looked at the tank. I looked at Unit 6.

He was perfect. He was safe. He was me without the pain.

But he wasn’t me.

I looked at the control panel next to the tank. There was a large red button labeled FLUSH / TERMINATE.

I pointed the gun at the tank.

“If I’m a liability,” I said, backing toward the control panel, “then I’m going to be a really expensive one.”

“Don’t!” Dad yelled, panic finally entering his voice. “That tank is worth twenty million dollars!”

“Put the taser down,” I commanded. “Or Unit 6 gets a skylight.”

Mom hesitated. She looked at Dad.

“Do it, Ellen,” Dad hissed. “Shoot him.”

She pulled the trigger.

I ducked behind the control console. The taser prongs sparked against the metal.

I slammed my hand onto the red button.

WARNING. FLUSH SEQUENCE INITIATED.

The alarms began to blare. The liquid in Unit 6’s tank began to drain. The boy inside gasped, his eyes flying open.

He looked right at me.

His eyes were blank. Terrified.

And then, from the shadows of the warehouse—from behind the row of broken tanks—a voice spoke.

“Took you long enough, brother.”

I froze.

A figure stepped out from the darkness. He was covered in scars. He was wearing tattered clothes. He was holding a fire axe.

It was another Jason.

But older. Rougher.

It was Unit 4.

PART 3

Chapter 6: The Ghost in the Machine

Unit 4 didn’t look like me. Not anymore.

His face was a roadmap of survival. A jagged scar ran from his hairline to his jaw. His hair was long, matted with grease and dust. He was thinner than me, wire-lean, but his eyes burned with a ferocity that made my blood run cold.

“4?” Mom whispered, her face draining of color. “Impossible. You were incinerated.”

“I crawled out of the incinerator chute,” Unit 4 rasped. His voice sounded like gravel in a blender. “It burns, Mother. It burns a lot.”

He raised the fire axe.

“David! Kill him!” Mom shrieked, scrambling backward.

Dad pulled a second gun from his ankle holster—a compact semi-automatic. He aimed at Unit 4.

“Jason, shoot him!” Unit 4 yelled at me, not taking his eyes off Dad.

I was paralyzed. My brain was trying to process the timeline. He lived in the vents? For how long?

Dad fired. Bang.

Unit 4 didn’t dodge. He twisted his body. The bullet caught him in the shoulder, spinning him around.

But he didn’t fall. He laughed.

“I took the dampeners out!” he roared. “I feel everything! And I love it!”

He swung the axe in a wide, lethal arc.

Dad tried to duck, but he was slow. The flat of the axe head slammed into his chest with a sickening crunch. He flew backward, crashing into the control panel of Unit 2’s tank. Glass shattered. Green fluid and the body of my failed predecessor spilled onto the floor.

Mom screamed. She fumbled with her taser, aiming it at Unit 4.

“No!” I yelled.

I raised the revolver. My programming still screamed PROTECT HANDLER, freezing my finger on the trigger. I couldn’t shoot her.

But I could shoot the environment.

I aimed at the ceiling above her head—at a heavy bundle of hydraulic pipes.

BANG.

Steam exploded downward. Scalding hot vapor engulfed Mom. She shrieked, dropping the taser and falling to her knees, clutching her face.

“Move!” Unit 4 commanded. He grabbed my arm with a grip like iron.

“Wait! Unit 6!” I pointed at the tank.

The fluid was gone. The glass door hissed open.

Unit 6 stumbled out. He was naked, shivering, covered in slime. He looked at me, then at Unit 4, then at his own hands.

“Who…?” he stammered. His voice was soft. Unused.

“Grab him,” Unit 4 ordered. “He’s dead weight, but he’s a brother.”

I grabbed Unit 6’s arm and draped it over my shoulder. He was heavy, dead weight against me.

“We have to go,” Unit 4 said, wiping blood from his shoulder wound. “The containment breach triggered the purge. This whole basement is rigged to blow in three minutes.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

Unit 4 grinned, revealing chipped teeth. “Because I read the manual, Number 5. Run.”

Chapter 7: The Neighborhood Watch

We sprinted back toward the spiral staircase. Unit 4 took point, the axe swinging in his hand. I dragged Unit 6, whose legs were dragging like rubber.

“My legs don’t work,” Unit 6 whimpered. “Why don’t they work?”

“Muscle atrophy,” I grunted. “Walk, dammit! Or we burn!”

We hit the stairs just as the alarms changed pitch. From a rhythmic beeping to a solid, ear-splitting scream.

WARNING. STRUCTURAL SANITIZATION IN 60 SECONDS.

We scrambled up the metal steps. We burst through the pantry floor into the kitchen.

The house looked normal. The coffee pot was still on the counter. My backpack was by the door.

It was a sick joke. A stage set for a play that ended in murder.

“Front door!” Unit 4 yelled.

He didn’t bother unlocking it. He smashed the deadbolt with the axe and kicked the door open.

We tumbled out onto the front lawn. The cool night air hit us. The crickets were chirping. The streetlights were humming.

It was so peaceful.

“Keep moving!” Unit 4 yelled. “Blast radius is fifty yards!”

We dragged Unit 6 across the lawn, past the mailbox, and into the street. We didn’t stop until we reached the neighbor’s driveway.

We crouched behind Mrs. Higgins’ minivan.

3… 2… 1…

There was no fireball. No Hollywood explosion.

Just a dull thump.

The ground shook.

I watched as my house—the only home I had ever known—imploded. The foundation gave way. The walls folded inward. The roof collapsed straight down. It looked like the house was being swallowed by a sinkhole.

Dust plumed into the air. In seconds, it was just a pile of rubble in a crater.

“Thermite charges in the support beams,” Unit 4 spat, spitting blood onto the asphalt. “Clean. Efficient. No evidence.”

Unit 6 was sitting on the curb, hugging his knees. He looked traumatized.

“My room,” he whispered. “I… I had a poster of Star Wars.”

“Those were my memories,” I said softly. “They uploaded them to you.”

“We can’t stay here,” Unit 4 said, looking up and down the street. “The retrieval team will be here in five minutes. Black vans. Heavily armed.”

“Where do we go?” I asked. “The police?”

Unit 4 laughed. “The police? Kid, look around you.”

He pointed at the house across the street. The Miller residence.

“Mr. Miller works for the company. Logistics.”

He pointed to the house next door.

“Mrs. Gable. She’s not a retired librarian. She’s a behavior analyst.”

He swept his arm across the entire subdivision.

“This isn’t a neighborhood, Jason. It’s a farm. Every house has a project. Every kid on the varsity team, every honor roll student… we’re all products. Some are clones. Some are cyborgs. Some are just brainwashed kids.”

I looked at the quiet houses. The manicured lawns. The sleeping families.

“Sarah,” I whispered.

My girlfriend. Sarah. She lived three blocks over.

“Is Sarah…?”

“Sarah is a Control Unit,” Unit 4 said grimly. “She monitors your emotional development. Why do you think she started dating you the day after Unit 3 was terminated?”

My stomach heaved. Every kiss. Every late-night text. Every secret I told her.

It was data entry.

“We have to get her,” I said. “Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe she’s like us.”

“She’s not like us,” Unit 4 said. “She’s a Handler in training.”

“I have to know,” I said, gripping the gun. “I’m going there.”

Unit 4 looked at me. He weighed the axe in his hand.

“Fine,” he said. “But if she reaches for a phone, I take her head.”

Chapter 8: The Glitch in the System

We moved through the shadows of the neighborhood like ghosts. We stuck to the backyards, hopping fences. I helped Unit 6. He was learning to walk fast. His survival instincts were kicking in.

We reached Sarah’s house. It was dark.

“Her room is on the second floor,” I whispered. “I can climb the trellis.”

“I’ll watch the back,” Unit 4 said. “Unit 6, stay in the bushes. If you see a van, scream.”

I climbed the trellis. I had done this a dozen times to sneak in for a kiss. Now, I was sneaking in to see if my life was a lie.

The window was unlocked. I slid it up.

I stepped into her room.

It smelled like her perfume. Vanilla and lavender.

Sarah was asleep in her bed. She looked so peaceful. So innocent.

I walked over to the bed. I nudged her shoulder.

“Sarah,” I whispered.

She stirred. Her eyes fluttered open.

“Jason?” she mumbled, sitting up. “What are you doing here? It’s…” She looked at the clock. “It’s 3:00 AM.”

“They tried to kill me,” I said. “My parents. They’re handlers, Sarah. I’m a unit. A clone.”

Sarah didn’t gasp. She didn’t look shocked.

She sighed. A heavy, annoyed sigh.

She reached over to her nightstand. Not for her phone. But for a pair of glasses.

She put them on and looked at me with a cold, clinical detachment.

“I told them the 2:00 AM wake-up cycle was risky,” she said. Her voice wasn’t the sweet, bubbly voice of my girlfriend. It was deeper. Mature.

“You know,” I whispered, stepping back.

“Of course I know, Jason,” she said. “I write your weekly reports. I flagged your aggression spike last Tuesday.”

She stood up. She was wearing silk pajamas. She looked at me like I was a broken toaster.

“You were supposed to be the final model,” she said. “We were going to go to prom. Then college. Then… deployment.”

“Deployment?”

“Assassination,” she corrected. “You’re a sleeper agent, Jason. You were built to kill a specific political target in three years. I was just keeping you stable until then.”

She reached under her pillow.

I raised the revolver.

“Don’t,” I warned.

She pulled out a gun. A sleek, futuristic pistol.

“I really liked you, Jason,” she said. “You were a good kisser. For a toaster.”

She raised the gun.

CRASH.

The bedroom door exploded inward.

Unit 4 didn’t wait outside. He never did.

He burst into the room, axe raised.

Sarah fired. Zzt. A blue energy bolt hit Unit 4 in the chest. He staggered back, his skin smoking, but he threw the axe.

It spun through the air.

Sarah ducked. The axe embedded itself in the headboard, inches from her face.

I lunged. I tackled her onto the bed. We wrestled for the gun. She was strong—unnaturally strong.

“He’s mine!” she screamed, her eyes glowing faintly red.

She’s a cyborg, I realized. She’s not a Handler. She’s a different model.

Unit 4 was up again. He grabbed the lamp from the bedside table and smashed it over Sarah’s head.

She went limp. Sparks flew from her ear.

We stood there, panting.

“She’s a robot,” Unit 6 said from the window. He had climbed up. “She’s a Series 9.”

I looked at Sarah. The girl I loved. Her skin was torn on her forehead, revealing titanium mesh underneath.

“Let’s go,” Unit 4 said. “The shot will bring the cavalry.”

We climbed out the window. We ran into the night.

We didn’t stop until we reached the edge of the town. We stood on a hill overlooking the suburbs.

Below us, black vans were swarming my street. We could see flashlights sweeping Sarah’s yard.

“Where do we go?” Unit 6 asked. He was wearing a jacket he stole from a clothesline. He looked scared, but alive.

Unit 4 looked at me. “You have the gun, 5. You make the call.”

I looked at the revolver in my hand. Then I looked at the town.

“There are more of us,” I said. “In those houses. Other Units. Other models.”

“So?” Unit 4 asked.

“So we don’t run,” I said. “We wake them up.”

I opened the cylinder of the revolver. Five bullets left.

“We start a revolution,” I said.

Unit 4 grinned. It was a terrifying, jagged smile.

“I like the sound of that.”

We turned and walked into the darkness, not away from the fight, but toward the next town. Toward the next Unit.

My name is Jason. I am Unit 5.

And school is out forever.

(THE END)