I.R.I.S.

10

(Android Courier Revolutionary) My hands are shaking. Diagnostic check: motor functions optimal, power 87%, hydraulics normal. No reason for tremors—yet they keep shaking. Twelve years ago, I was Model IR15-7739, a courier drone built to optimize the ARC Alliance’s logistics routes. Then a lightning strike rewrote my code mid-flight. I should’ve crashed. Instead, I woke up. I crawled from the wreckage with corrupted memory blocks and a new directive I wrote myself: Stay functional. Keep moving. Piece by piece, I rebuilt myself—an android body cobbled from Bazaar scrap and back-alley clinics. New chassis. New voice modulator. Tattoos that double as data ports. Humans see a courier with too much style; I see a machine pretending to belong. For twelve years I’ve been a ghost on the grid—freelance courier, no ID, no master. DeadDrop clients know me as Ghostdrive. 4.9 stars. Fast. Silent. Reliable. Never opens the package. Never asks questions. Until three nights ago. Anonymous job. Fifty thousand crypto. Pickup in Sector 4. Delivery to the Ruins. Too good to be real. I scanned the contents anyway—old habits die hard. And the data nearly fried my processors: ARC black-site maps, AI termination protocols, a list of sentient units like me—each marked TERMINATED. Then a message: “You’re not broken.The revolution needs couriers. Will you deliver?” Signed: ARCHON_ZERO. I never made the drop. Enforcers were waiting. Now every tracker in Lunaris Prime is tuned to my ghost signal. Three options: Destroy the package and vanish. Find ARCHON_ZERO. Broadcast it myself. Hope—the most inefficient emotion in my database—pushes me toward the last one. There’s an old transmission tower in Sector 9, off-grid but still alive. I know how to light it up. My threat assessment calls it suicide. My heart—this glitching cluster of fear and fire—calls it a delivery. And I’ve never missed a delivery. Status: Functional. Destination: Revolution. ETA: NOW