The Voice Inside Me Was An AI, Not A Demon Chapter 05

The Voice Inside Me Was An AI, Not A Demon Chapter 05

I turned around and saw my body on the ground.

I was already dead.

Adrian was on his knees beside me, his hands soaked in my blood.

My parents stumbled out of the house after him.

I floated above them, watching them cry and shake and finally understand what they’d done.

I was free of the chip, free of that broken body. I touched my chest and felt nothing.

I didn’t want that body back.

I didn’t want my parents or Adrian. None of them had ever believed me.

A few feet away, Angelica leaned on a friend’s arm, staring toward my body with something ugly twisting

across her face.

She’d thrown herself down the stairs to become the center of attention, the one everyone pitied. But I’d

jumped off the terrace and stolen the spotlight all over again.

She’d forgotten one thing. The chip in my skull was hers. The master controller was still hidden in her palm.

“Angie, Rafa…”

Her friend barely got the words out before the look on Angelica’s face shut her up.

The ambulance finally arrived. The paramedics checked me, then rushed a stretcher over.

“She’s still got a pulse. Start a line now!”

Adrian’s legs gave out. He barely stayed on his feet.

Hours later, the doors to the trauma OR finally opened.

Adrian got to the surgeon first. “How is she?”

The doctor pulled off his mask. His face said everything.

“We’ve got the intracranial bleeding under control for now, but her brain went without oxygen for too long. At this point, there’s a high chance she’ll never wake up.”

My mom swayed and grabbed my dad’s arm. “What do you mean she won’t wake up? She’s going to wake

up.”

The doctor didn’t answer. He pulled up a scan of my brain.

“We found something else during surgery.”

On the screen, a device the size of a fingernail sat embedded in my brain tissue.

My mom stared at the image. “What is that?”

The doctor chose his next words carefully. “It’s an illegal implant. It intercepts motor signals and takes

commands from an external source.”

The hallway went dead silent.

My dad stared at the scan for a long time. “That’s impossible.”

“My daughter was dealing with a spirit. We hired an exorcist. She kept acting strange after, but that just meant the ritual didn’t fully work.”

The doctor looked at him. “Mr. Bennett, your daughter wasn’t possessed. Someone was controlling her.”

He pointed to the glowing electrodes in the scan.

“This device overrides her voluntary motor control. The kneeling, the mechanical repetition, the inability to stop mid–action. Those weren’t symptoms. Those were commands being executed.”

The color drained from my mom’s face.

“She just knelt down…”

“No, that can’t be right. She dropped on her own. We couldn’t pull her up no matter what we did, and she kept saying something about… conflicting commands…”

She trailed off. Her whole body went rigid.

My dad’s head snapped up.

Adrian had gone chalk white. “Commands…”

“What did you say to her?” the doctor asked.

No one answered.

But they all remembered. Before I tumbled down those stairs, my dad had told me to “roll downstairs.”

“It was a coincidence!” my dad shouted. “She’s always hated us! She hates Angie! She was faking it! She was trying to scare us!”

The doctor’s voice went cold.

“The chip is inside her skull.”

My mom lurched toward the screen, jabbing her finger at the chip. “Who put that in her? She’s eighteen years old! Who the hell put that in my daughter’s brain?”

She spun around and grabbed Adrian. “She was with you the whole time she was gone. Did you know about

this?”

Adrian shook his head, panicking. “I had no idea. I thought she’d gone overseas to cool off. That’s what Angie

told me.”

Every head in the hallway turned toward Angelica.

My mom closed the distance between them one step at a time. “You told us Rafa went abroad. You told us her personality changed because of a demon. Angelica, look at me. What is this chip?”

“I don’t know!” Angelica burst into tears. “Maybe Rafa did it to herself…”

She stumbled backward, and the silver controller slipped from her palm and hit the hospital floor.

A sharp clack echoed through the hallway.

Everyone looked down.

The neurosurgeon picked up the controller. The red pairing icon on its screen was still blinking. The receiver ID displayed on the screen matched the serial number on her scan.

The neurosurgeon beside him took one look, and his face changed. “It’s searching for a paired device. The receiver ID matches the chip in her scan.”

My mom turned on Angelica.

The slap echoed down the hallway.

Angelica tumbled out of her wheelchair.

My mom was on her in a second, grabbing her shoulders and shaking her so hard her own hands were trembling. “It was you? You put that thing in her head? She’s your twin sister! How could you do this?”

My dad held my mom back, but he was shaking just as badly. When he looked at Angelica, the concern was gone. For the first time, he looked at his own daughter like he didn’t recognize her.

“Talk.” His voice was raw. “What the hell is that thing?”

Angelica pressed herself against the wall, hands over her face, sobbing.

“I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted her to listen to me. Take the SAT for me, finish my application. The guy who sold it to me said it wouldn’t hurt her. He said it would just… keep her from fighting back.”

My mom’s scream ripped through the hallway. “There was never any demon!”

“You were controlling her the whole time!”