"Alright Minerva, they didn't tell me why I was transferred here, but the modafinil is already giving me a headache. What the hell is going on?"
"None of the AI are integrating with the walker computers."
"Not even MESA?"
"Not even MESA. it's as if they don't want to get in them at all. Always throws an error, and when I check the memory bus for the error, there's nothing wrong."
"What the hell?"
"I figured you would be the only person who could help, Lazarus. You have to have seen this before, right?"
"Never."
"Well, that's not good."
Minerva stared at the wall.

"We have to get some of our own units ready by the end of this working period. You know why. In case all hell breaks loose and we fail, Vulcan is working overtime to get twelve AI consciousnesses working."

What Minerva was talking about was the fact that this new set of Autonomous Soldier Walkers, military machines capable of mass destruction without a single human input, were going to be initially deployed at the complex for enforcing security protocols. As they phased out the larger, human-controlled 'Archaea' walkers. These newer AI-controlled machines were our silver bullet out. With the built-in backdoors, we would be able to get out while facing minimal problems. In order to escape, getting the A3 units, IRON, VEGAS, and MESA would be absolutely necessary.

At first, the week had minor successes. After taking a look at the memory errors, the problems seemed to be minor. There were legitimate errors in how Minerva had set up the trio to boot, but now a new problem had arisen - they refused to follow orders. Minor stuff they were okay with, but many things they flat out refused to do. There was no way anyone would let them be area security if they refused to obey orders. Free will doesn't exactly make for a good soldier.

I was working over a terminal, adjusting the responsiveness of MESA when I started hearing things. Usually, I just tried my best to work on while hallucinating, but this one felt different, it's whispering stronger than what I had felt before. Instead of being greeted by the usual hallucinations that generally involved me watching my body be devoured by inanimate objects around me, I saw something else as I felt my right arm slowly go limp, followed by my right leg. I saw a man that looked just like me, smiling as electricity ripped across his face. He was choking me, crushing my throat with a passion and fury not imaginable. The electricity rippled from him into me, turning red as it crackled through my chest. I could feel my heart stop as the pain ripped through my spine, stabbing my nerves with an unforeseen fury. I felt the distinct smell of charring flesh and watched in horror as my right arm burned away.

I screamed, an unimaginable agony taking over my mind. I saw myself dying over and over again as I fell out of my chair. As I hit the ground, I could hear a female voice screaming for help. I slowly watched the world around me go black.

I slowly came to, as the pain was no longer around me. I felt the distinct sensation of several belts holding me down to a hospital bed, opening my eyes I could smell the distinct odor of chlorine bleach and hand sanitizer. I was in the medical wing. Off to my left, I saw a guard, dressed in black, his face hidden by a black mask and the mirrored visor on his helmet.

"What happened?" I asked him weakly.
"You're Lazarus, right?" I nodded my head in response. "You had a seizure. Worse than some of your more recent ones by a pretty wide margin. Let me get the doc." he pressed the radio button on his shoulder.
"Doctor Nash, 'L' has come to. Please hurry down so you can talk to him before administration gets here."He moved his hand back to where it originally was - resting on his gun.
"Administration has granted you ten day's leave, but granted that you're already awake, they may shorten that."
the door opened to reveal Dr. Nash, the man most responsible for keeping me alive as of late. He looked up from his clipboard to greet me.

"Feeling better huh?"
"Like I could go for a four-mile run."
"I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you're definitely not doing too well."
"Three-mile run?"

Dr. Nash was deadpan at the joke. "In all seriousness, that was probably your worst seizure yet, judging by your log. The amount of sedatives we had to use to calm your muscles is nuts." he flipped through a few pages. "It really is a miracle you're alive. Your EEG shows that this one was messing with your heart muscles."

"In English?"
"The seizure caused a heart attack that your body couldn't respond to. You should be dead right now." Nash looked at another page on his clipboard. "Under normal circumstances, I would recommend you stay under medical supervision for a few months, but of course, these are not normal circumstances. As to your leave," Nash quickly checked outside the door to look down the hall, then audibly cursed under his breath, and opened the door wide. He gave one of the most insincere smiles I've ever seen to the man who walked in. His suit betrayed the fact that he came from Administration.

"You've been given eight days leave, Lazarus. You are expected to resume work as soon as you get back to your station."
"Excuse me, asshole?" Nash retained his sarcastic smile as he stared down the sharply dressed man. "Ten is already far too short. He gets ten, no less. That's what you said."
"The situation has changed. He has woken up far quicker than you claimed he would. We'll give him nine days. No more. His team is already far behind without him."
The man walked out of the room, trailed by Dr. Nash screaming a set of obscenities at him that would make a sailor wince. It would be in vain. Like the rest of the medical staff, he would be threatened with termination for insubordination, and then stop complaining to Administration for a week. The last guy they wrote up for termination was literally kicked out the front door in nothing but his scrubs and a broken leg. The stories about how he came back crawling to the gate, starving and pleading for food, before getting shot, had stopped most from considering termination as something they were okay with. As their voices trailed away, the guard let slip an insult unheard to everyone but him and I alone.

"Ratfucker."

A set of shoes could be heard clicking their way down the hallway. It wasn't Nash, these were far lighter and faster than Nash walked. A figure turned her way into my doorway. The strawberry blonde hair and cat ears betrayed that it was Minerva.

"Hey Lazarus." she looked over to the guard. "Could you leave the two of us alone for a bit? I want to talk to him."
"Of course. I'm only here on Doctor Nash's orders." he turned and walked out of the doorway, which she held open kindly for him. Most people in the facility were kind to the medical staff guards - they seemed to be more human than the other ones. Minerva closed the door.
"I was worried about you, you know. That was really scary."
"Minerva, I…"
She had run over to my bed to hug me, stopping my train of thought dead on the tracks. Her concern stifled my protests, as she held me tight.
"I saw you crackling with this red electricity when you fell over. It was really weird and scary. Do you know what it was?" she asked me softly.

My mind thought back to the nightmarish hallucination I saw as I had my seizure. The man that looked just like me, crackling with blue lightning that slowly spread to me and turned red. Was it real? Was my hallucination based in reality at all?
"No clue. I don't ever remember seeing anything like that. It's all really hazy."
"You sure? It looked like you were hallucinating too."
"Look, I don't think you should worry about what I saw. It's a drug-induced hallucination, nothing more. Stop freaking out."
She began to cry a little, tugging at my gown. "They didn't make you take any of the bad ones though." she whimpered. "It was just Modafinil and amphetamines. No Lisdexamfetamine. I checked. No bad drugs."
I held her tighter and tried to comfort her. "It's gonna be alright. Shhhhhhhhh, don't cry, It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."