She didn't hesitate. She dropped her wrench, wiped her red-stained hand across the pristine white wall of the corridor, and ran toward the airlock.
Elara looked at the drone, then at the smudge of crimson on her palm. For the first time in her life, she didn't feel like a tool. She felt like an accident—the most wonderful accident in the city. The Choice PrГ©configurations
The city's central nervous system, the , noticed the drop in her efficiency. A "Correction Drone" was dispatched to her sector. Its sensors scanned her neural load and found the "Préconfiguration" corrupted by an unauthorized imaginative loop. She didn't hesitate
She painted a small, abstract bird on the inside of a furnace door where no one would ever look. The System's Response For the first time in her life, she didn't feel like a tool