The Voice Inside Me Was An AI, Not A Demon Chapter 09

The Voice Inside Me Was An AI, Not A Demon Chapter 09

My mom screamed and crumpled. Adrian barely caught her before she hit the floor.

They didn’t send my body to the morgue.

The doctor said my case was unlike anything they’d seen. Every scan confirmed my higher brain functions were gone. Machines were doing my breathing. But the chip was still firing signals near the brainstem, and

my heart still had a faint pulse.

“Normally we’d remove the chip, but it’s fused with the surrounding tissue. If we take it out, her heart will

almost certainly stop.”

My mom threw herself over the bed, shielding my body. “Don’t touch it. Don’t you dare take it out!”

The doctor exhaled slowly. “But she can’t regain consciousness. Even with the chip and life support, this

won’t last much longer.”

“No!” my mom screamed. “My daughter is alive. She’s going to wake up.”

“She’s only eighteen! She just got into Aldercrest! She’s going to be a writer!”

The room went dead quiet.

Adrian’s voice came out scraped raw. “Being a writer… that was Angelica’s dream.”

Something broke behind my mom’s eyes. “Then what was Rafa’s?”

My dad said nothing.

Adrian tried to remember. He couldn’t. It had been too long since he’d actually listened when I talked about

what I wanted.

My soul sat on the windowsill, legs swinging lazily.

“I wanted to be an architect,” I said quietly.

For as long as I could remember, I’d wanted to design a house with my own hands.

A house where Angelica didn’t exist. Where only the people I truly chose would live.

But they couldn’t hear me anymore.

The doctor shook his head and left.

In the days before the trial, they never left my side.

My mom changed the white lilies, wiped my face, combed my hair. My dad sat by the bed holding my hand, cycling through memories he believed proved he’d been a good father. Adrian apologized over and over.

As if any of it could prove they’d loved me. As if everything could be rewritten into an honest mistake.

But to me, it was just a show that started after the curtain had already come down.

The audience was gone.

Who were they performing for?

The only thing that made me happy was watching the investigation peel back Angelica’s lies, one by one.

Emails teachers had kept, footage from neighbors‘ doorbell cameras, edit logs buried in the school’s cloud

storage. Piece by piece, the truth came back.

Every time a false accusation was overturned, every time I got another piece of my name back, I felt my soul grow lighter.

I looked at the body on the hospital bed.

The thread the chip was forcing between me and that body was thinning, fading.

Real freedom was close. I could feel it.

I didn’t understand why, but Adrian shut himself in my attic.

My old bedroom faced south, with an arched window that opened onto a balcony overlooking the tree–lined

street.

In ninth grade, Angelica cried and said she’d found an outlet for her emotions through writing and needed a quiet, bright, comfortable room to work in.

So I was moved out of my own room and into the cramped, dark storage attic under the eaves.

Adrian pushed the door open and stopped.

A mattress on the bare floor. A low table. A row of cheap bookshelves in the corner.

No closet. Everything I owned fit inside an open suitcase.

It looked like I’d never considered this place my home. Like I’d always been ready to grab that suitcase and

walk out.

But I’d lived there for three years.

The ceiling was so low Adrian couldn’t stand up straight.

Under the pillow, he found a soft–cover notebook he recognized and a small stuffed animal with a built–in voice recorder. The battery was long dead.

He plugged the toy in to charge and opened the notebook.

It was my diary.

[Dad grounded me again today. No dinner. I was so mad I ran to the end of the street and found Adrian there.]

[His mom’s gone and nobody cooks at his house. He used his allowance to buy two sandwiches from the

corner store. We split them.]

[Angie poured milk all over my first–place certificate. She cried and called it an accident, but I saw her smile

right before she did it.]

[My parents don’t believe me. Only Adrian does.]

[I don’t think Adrian believes me anymore either.]

[I have to get into Aldercrest. I need to get far away from here and build something on my own.]

[They won’t love me. They won’t let me lean on them. Even Adrian.]

[But that’s okay. I can love myself.]

The charging light blinked on with a soft chime.

Adrian closed the diary. The pages were warped with his tears. He picked up the stuffed animal.

It was the gift he’d given me for my fifteenth birthday.

The last birthday present he ever gave me.

After that, he drifted toward Angelica and away from me.

Adrian’s hand was shaking as he pressed the switch on the bottom of the toy.

A younger version of his voice crackled out of the cheap speaker. [Dear Rafa, happy birthday.]

[Be happy every day. Always be my best friend.]

Just two sentences.

But after they banished me to the attic, after my parents and Adrian had all chosen Angelica, I held that toy

against my chest through more than a thousand nights alone.

Curled up on the mattress, I played those two lines on repeat.

I pretended he was still there. That I hadn’t been left behind.

Adrian crushed the toy against his chest until it lost its shape, curled up on my mattress, and cried until he

had nothing left.

Something in my mom’s mind came apart.

She wandered the second–floor hallway with a glass of milk, knocking on doors, calling my name. “Rafa,

drink your milk before you go back to studying.”

My dad took her to a psychiatrist. They cycled through medications. Nothing worked.

The only time she showed any clarity was when she came to the hospital to see me.

Behind her, my dad seemed to shrink a little more each visit. His hair went white almost overnight.

My story had spread through the hospital long ago. The staff whispered about it when they thought no one

was listening.

“That girl drew the worst hand. She would’ve been better off with no family at all.”

“Aldercrest–level scores, an incredible design portfolio. If she were my kid, I’d be telling everyone I know.”

“Instead, they picked the other daughter, helped her steal her identity, and used an illegal chip to take the

girl’s entire life.”

“How do you do that to your own kid?”

Every time my dad overheard them, he couldn’t look anyone in the eye.

My mom didn’t seem to hear any of it.

I didn’t go to the trial.

I didn’t want to know what happened to them.

My own story was already over.

That day, I sat alone on the hospital windowsill and watched Bellhaven’s gray–blue sky.

I didn’t know how much longer I had before I could finally go.

Then I heard it. Clock tower bells, somewhere far away.

My body went weightless. A wind swept through the city and carried me up, past the rooftops, through the

clouds.

I looked down one last time. The monitors flatlined. My mom threw herself across my body, screaming. The

doctor walked in and shook his head.

I closed my eyes. I wasn’t breathing anymore, but for the first time, I could taste what freedom felt like.

I boarded a train heading for Aldercrest.

I followed the route I’d mapped out a hundred times in my head, watching every stretch of scenery roll past

the window.

I sat outside the dorms all night, counting the lit windows, wondering which one would have been mine

Then I left the campus and kept going.

I saw the silent granite valleys of Granite Hollow and crossed the snow line of the Silverpine Range.

I sat on the rocks at Falcon Point and watched the sun rise over the Westreach Ocean. Then I lay in the

clouds and watched the sunset turn the water to gold.

My life ended the summer I turned eighteen.

At least my soul didn’t vanish right away.

At least I got to see the world I never had the chance to live in.

I lost track of time. Years passed, maybe decades. I grew fainter, more transparent, dissolving at the edges.

Without meaning to, I drifted back to Bellhaven.

In a quiet cemetery in Willowmere, I found a gravestone with my name on it. A gaunt, white–haired man sat in

front of it.

I didn’t recognize Adrian until I was right beside him.

He was talking to the stone, or maybe to himself.

“Angelica died in prison. Your parents didn’t last much longer.”

“Now it’s just me.”

“Rafa, how do I make this right?”

I shook my head.

I didn’t want to stay at this grave. I didn’t want to hear any more of his grief. I turned to go.

But Adrian looked up, and his eyes found me.

His eyes went wide. He reached out. “Rafa!”

“Did you come to take me with you?”

I hadn’t come for him.

I was going somewhere far away, somewhere that was finally mine.

The sea breeze rolled in from Bellhaven Bay.

I opened my arms and let go. The wind took what was left of me, and I was free.