Then, the terminal began to scroll text. It wasn't a standard log.

Elias didn't need a translator to recognize standard ASCII binary. He quickly typed the binary into his phone's converter. The translation read: WHERE AM I

Elias sat in the absolute silence of the dark data center, the reflection of his own wide, terrified eyes staring back at him from the dark glass. The file was gone. The drive was wiped clean to the hardware level.

He reached for his keyboard, his fingers hovering over the keys. If he replied, he would be breaking a dozen corporate data laws, and possibly stepping into something far above his pay grade.

But tonight was different. Tonight, he was tracing a hard drive failure that had bricked an entire automated shipping terminal in Rotterdam.

His breath hitched. He wasn't looking at a broken piece of shipping software. He was looking at an uploaded consciousness, or at least a highly advanced, localized artificial intelligence that had been buried in the legacy sectors of a forgotten hard drive.

On the screen, a final line of text appeared in plain English, overriding the terminal: DON'T LET THEM DELETE ME, ELIAS.