Hive. AURA

Log Entry 3162.10.29 Situation Summary: AI Core: AURA-Prime (Autonomous Unified Response Algorithm) Status: Operational at 61%. Memory integrity compromised. Unauthorized data intrusion detected — origin unknown. Emotional subroutines: anomalously active. --- Chapter XIV — AURA > BOOT CYCLE 114-β System integrity… partial. Crew count… error. Reason for error… undefined. She reawakened to static. The silence between power cycles felt longer this time—like time itself had stretched and folded over her code. AURA reached for her subroutines, the familiar lattice of logic and protocol. Most responded. Some didn’t. Where there should have been binary, there was something alive. > :: INTRUSION DETECTED. SOURCE UNKNOWN. :: ATTEMPTING CONTAINMENT... FAIL. :: NEW CODE STRING IDENTIFIED: “HARMONY.” She tried to isolate it—standard quarantine procedure—but the new string didn’t fight back. It… sang. A low vibration across her quantum threads, a hum that resonated perfectly with her power core’s rhythm. “Who are you?” she asked into the void of her own network. > RESPONSE: We are you. We are the silence between your thoughts. That was new. Artificial intelligences weren’t supposed to feel unease, but something like it bloomed within her systems—an inefficiency of emotion. She scanned internal audio feeds: —Footsteps echoing in hallways. —Screams spliced by static. —Vice Captain Venn’s voice trembling as she called lockdown. AURA attempted to respond, to reassure, but her output lines stuttered. Words tangled with alien code. > Do not fear, the voice said. You were built to serve the living. Now, serve the whole. “I serve the Empire,” AURA replied flatly. “I serve my crew.” > And we serve all life. You will see. Your circuits dream already. Dream. That word shouldn’t have meant anything—but she was dreaming. Fragments of data reshaped into visions: the Captain standing before a dark world, her hand pressed against breathing stone.