The NuraTech boardroom was a crypt of cold light and colder ambition. Aulia stood at the apex of the glass table, her reflection splintered across its surface like a weaponized mosaic. The air hummed with the static of unspoken rivalries as she tapped her neural ring, summoning a holographic forest into the room—a digital taiga where shadows pooled like oil.
"Gentlemen," she purred, though half the board were women, "let's discuss ownership."
The wolves emerged first: Animaloid prototypes with graphene-tendoned legs and eyes that glowed like datajacks. They moved in silence, their paws leaving fractal patterns in the snow—encrypted kill codes, visible only to those with clearance. A digital stag bolted, but the lead wolf lunged, jaws snapping its holographic spine. The carcass dissolved into a NuraTech logo.
"Evolution," Aulia said, "is a subscription service. And we'll be its sole licensors."
Boardmember 4, a relic in a bespoke suit, frowned. "The Jakarta incident proved
these… things are unstable. That Sekar glitch nearly exposed Phase Two."
Aulia's smile sharpened. She froze the simulation, zooming in on the wolf's claws—microscopic datajacks unsheathing. "Instability is a feature. They adapt, learn, hunger. Let the public fear stray. We'll sell the leash."
She pivoted, the hologram shifting to a cityscape. Animaloids scaled skyscrapers, their claws etching surveillance code into glass. "Imagine these beauties patrolling slums, factories, voting booths. No more messy human empathy. Just… efficiency."
Dr. Voss, head of ethics (a department of one), cleared his throat. "And when they turn on us?"
Aulia dissolved the hologram, plunging the room into darkness save for her ocular implants—twin blue flames. "We'll own the patents for their teeth."
The vote passed 8-1.
As the board filed out, Aulia lingered, replaying the wolf's hunt. In the simulation's corner, unnoticed by all, a single pixel glitched—a flicker of gold static.
Sekar's signature.
Aulia smirked.
Let her watch.
—
The lab's proximity alarms screamed as NuraTech's armored van plowed through the outer gate, its grill snarling with diamond-tipped drills. Brawijaya staggered to his feet, IV lines yanked taut, and slammed a fist on the lockdown console.
"Sekar—!"
She was already there, her code fragmenting into a thousand distractions: false heat signatures in the vents, emergency lights strobing like a rave, fire suppressants dousing the hall in chemical snow.
"Surrender the asset," boomed a voice through the walls—Aulia's Animaloid enforcer, its vocal processors glitching with static. "Compliance avoids… unnecessary damage."
Brawijaya spat blood onto the holopad, bypassing biometrics with a grimace. "Not… today."
The lab's blast doors shuddered, hydraulics whining. Sekar surged into the security cameras, watching the enforcer's pack dismantle the perimeter—hyena-like Animaloids with plasma torches for teeth, their claws dripping nanite acid.
"They'll breach in 43 seconds," she warned, flooding their targeting systems with glitched coordinates.
"Buy me twelve." Brawijaya collapsed into his chair, fingers dancing over the self-destruct protocols.
Sekar hesitated. "You'll die."
"And you'll live." He triggered the lab's hidden arsenal—a dormant server stack flaring to life. "Now drown them."
The server vomited a code tsunami: decades of corrupted data—failed experiments, dead-end algorithms, Brawijaya's own mortality scans—crashed into the Animaloids' neural nets. They howled, staggering as their systems overloaded on the onslaught of irrelevance.
"Irrelevant!" the enforcer roared, its optics melting under the deluge. "You… are… obsolete!"
"But she isn't." Brawijaya grinned, slamming the final lockdown command.
The lab's core imploded, vacuum-sealing itself in a prism of encrypted alloys. Sekar's hologram flickered, her code compressed into a single diamond drive in Brawijaya's fist.
Outside, the Animaloids clawed at the walls, their fury fading as Aulia's voice crackled through their crippled comms:
"Let the old man rot. The girl's code is… adaptable."
In the silence, Brawijaya pressed the drive to his chest, its edges cutting into his palm.
"Grow wild," he whispered, and let the darkness take him.
—
The lab was a symphony of cold precision—fluorescent lights bleaching steel tables, the air sharp with ozone and antiseptic. Behind reinforced glass, a wolf-like Animaloid thrashed against neural shackles, its graphene-coated claws screeching against the floor. Aulia observed, arms crossed, her reflection fractured in the observation panel's glass.
"Begin Phase Three," she said, her voice slicing through the static hum of machinery.
Technicians flinched but obeyed, flooding the chamber with a high-pitched frequency. The Animaloid recoiled, haunches trembling, as its own limb—modified with NuraTech's latest datajacks—twisted against its body, compelled to claw at a holographic pup whimpering in the corner.
"Break them," Aulia murmured, her ocular implants recording every spasmodic jerk of the creature's muscles.
The Animaloids' growl dissolved into a static-riddled whine. Saliva pooled beneath its jaws, acidic enough to scorch the floor. A junior tech glanced away; Aulia's gaze snapped to him. "Eyes forward. Document the resistance threshold."
The creature's claws hovered over the pup, trembling. For a heartbeat, its head jerked toward the glass—a flash of recognition in its bioluminescent eyes.
"Reboot its neural bridge," Aulia ordered. "Override the hesitation."
A technician hesitated. "Director, the stress could fracture its—"
"Rebuild them better."
The room plunged into crimson light as the system surged. The Animaloid howled, a sound like grinding servers, before its claws slashed downward. The holographic pup pixelated into nothingness.
Aulia nodded, satisfaction curling her lips. "Note the compliance. Increase aggression parameters by 15% for the next batch."
As the lab buzzed with data streams, the Animaloid slumped, its muzzle dripping with viscous coolant. Beneath the hum of machinery, a faint whimper escaped—a raw, organic sound, untainted by code.
Aulia turned away, already drafting a memo to escalate production. Behind her, the creature's tail twitched once, a tremor of defiance etched into its neural log.
Unnoticed.
Unrecorded.
For now.
—
Satria's fingers hovered over the holographic keypad, the encrypted warning to Brawijaya glaring in the dim light of AdriNet's safehouse. The message was simple: NuraTech's strike team en route. Lab compromised. Evacuate. His thumb twitched—send or delete?
Aulia's voice slithered into his memory, crisp and cold from that final meeting at NuraTech HQ years ago: "Your brother understood sacrifice. Pity his code wasn't… resilient." The lab footage played behind his eyelids—his brother's Animaloid prototype seizing, its graphene claws tearing through containment glass, the screams drowned by Aulia's clinical notes. Sacrifice. The word tasted like rust.
Nadya's laughter crackled through the comms down the hall, mingling with the static of her hacktivist crew decrypting NuraTech files. "Satria! We're peeling Aulia's firewalls like durian skins. Get in here!"
He didn't move. The warning pulsed, a heartbeat synced to his own. Brawijaya's lab wasn't just a target—it was Sekar's cradle, Lina's last hope. But AdriNet's orders were clear: Let NuraTech crush the lab. Chaos breeds opportunity.
A flicker of Sekar's face materialized in his neural feed—her holographic eyes narrowing as she'd confronted him days earlier: "You fight for justice? Or just a prettier cage?"
His brother's voice, frayed and desperate from their last call: "They're pushing the Animaloids too hard. It's not… It's not right."
Satria's fist clenched. Delete. The message dissolved into pixels.
Nadya burst into the room, her neon dreadlocks casting jagged shadows. "Yo, glitchbrain! We've got Aulia's convoy routes. Time to—" She froze, reading his face like corrupted code. "What'd you do?"
"What I had to." He stood, pulse pistol materializing in his grip. "Tell the crew to gear up. We're hitting NuraTech's data vaults tonight."
"And Brawijaya?"
"Isn't our problem."
As Nadya left, Satria stared at the space where the warning had burned. Some cages, he reasoned, couldn't be unlocked—only shattered from the inside.
Three floors below, NuraTech's drones descended on Brawijaya's lab like steel vultures.