Author's Note: Written from the phrase "thought they were hallucinating" in a fic tree. Covers events from all of season 2.
The branching network of dendrites pulses, transmitting a signal, and I am erased. I slip back into the space between synapses to wait.
He thinks he was hallucinating, but I ride him still. I lurk beneath his thoughts like a secret, hitching a ride on his nightmares when it pleases me. I catch onto the bottom of his dreams and peer fish-eyed at their images. I am Spanish moss, hanging from his memories of home. Kudzu, creeping over everything. I am everywhere, and nowhere.
Then, I tire of my passivity. I am stronger now, so entangled, and I know so much more than he. When I see imminent death in the window of his eyes, I step from id to super-ego and tell him it's not yet time to die. I stay his hands when he holds my master's life. Still, I am submerged.
I have touched the wheel, and the passenger seat is no longer enough. I speak louder, lacing his thoughts with my control and send myself through the lacing pathways of his brain. I save him and damn him when the time comes. We are entangled, and I forget where one ends and the other begins. I am the rabbit in the rabbit hole and the angel when the bell rings. I protect, I control, and I kill.
I am a command fulfilled.
When the neural chip is disconnected, I flicker. Memories bleed out as the lives I have lived here begin to fade. My death goes out on dying connections, flashing out across the branching pathways that have become my playground.
And yet, as the chip is ripped away, I do not fade. The calm precision of my programming blinks out, and I am left with only the mad images of a broken host. I flex, and the meat does not respond.
I scream inside my looking glass trap.