Chapter 1

The cold silver wires felt like ice against my skin, a stark contrast to the familiar warmth of my lab. Three years of my life, three years of marriage, were supposed to lead to our shared triumph, not this. Not me strapped to a chair in our penthouse, the neural interface humming ominously as it pressed against my temple.

This was Mark' s project, but it was my creation. The MindSync algorithm was my soul, coded into existence. I, Ava Green, a software engineer who believed in technology that could connect people, had designed it to personalize user experience on a level never seen before. I gave it to my husband, Mark, the brilliant tech CEO I loved, the man I thought loved me.

He took my genius and twisted it. He re-engineered MindSync to do more than just personalize. It extracted a user's deepest desires, their most private emotional data, turning human feeling into a commodity he could monetize for unparalleled market control.

And I never knew. I never knew our marriage was a lie, a three-year performance to get his hands on my work. His heart had always belonged to someone else, his college sweetheart, Sophia, a struggling actress with a rare neurological condition. The condition caused her constant, extreme emotional pain, and Mark was obsessed with curing her. He believed only my MindSync, infused with my own unique emotional intelligence, could do it.

The machine whirred to life, and a piercing pain shot through my skull. It felt like my thoughts were being ripped out one by one, my memories shredded, my feelings siphoned away into the humming device.

Tears streamed down my face, hot against my cold skin.

"Mark, please," I begged, my voice cracking. "You promised. You promised you would always protect me."

He stood over me, his face a mask of cold determination. The man who held me when I had nightmares, who told me I was his entire world, looked at me like I was a piece of hardware.

"Ava, Sophia's condition is agonizing," he said, his voice flat and devoid of the warmth I once cherished. "Only your personalized MindSync can truly help her. Your emotional core is the key."

He didn't look at my tears. He watched the monitor, tracking the progress of the extraction. The pain was unbearable, a raw, screaming agony inside my head, but a strange numbness was starting to spread, dulling the edges of everything. It was like my very essence was being drained.

When it was over, he detached the wires. I slumped in the chair, a hollowed-out shell. The vibrant world of emotions I once lived in was gone, replaced by a gray, empty void.

He carefully removed a glowing data chip from the machine. It hummed softly, a faint echo of my own life force, my emotional essence, now trapped in silicon and metal. He placed it gently into a black velvet box, handling it with more care than he had ever shown me.

"Once Sophia is cured and famous, I'll bring you back to our penthouse," he promised, the words empty and meaningless.

He left me there, fragmented and numb.

He gave my life' s work, my very soul, to Sophia. My years of intellectual property, the emotional data that made MindSync uniquely mine, were now hers to enhance her acting, to give her the emotional range she could never achieve on her own.

Without the core of MindSync, I was a ghost. My own creation, the thing that defined me, was gone. I felt like an automaton, going through the motions of life without any of the feeling.

I found him days later. I had to. The silence in my head was deafening.

"Mark, I don't want you anymore," I whispered. The words had no emotional weight behind them, just a statement of fact.

He didn't seem to care. I became a shadow, following him from a distance, a desperate attempt to stay connected to the last piece of myself. Without the MindSync core, my cognitive functions were degrading. I knew the process. My mind would fray, my thoughts would unravel, and soon I would be a vegetable. The gaping void where my emotions used to be was a source of constant, raw pain, a phantom limb of the soul.

Mark never offered to help. He never looked back. He was completely focused on Sophia.

"Without emotions, you can't feel pain, right?" he had said dismissively when I tried to explain the agony. "So, no need for repairs."

I watched him enter his new luxury apartment building, the one he now shared with her. As the glass doors slid shut behind him, a wave of mental feedback hit me so hard I collapsed on the sidewalk, coughing up a trickle of blood. The connection was still there, a dying thread.

Inside, Mark rushed to Sophia' s side. He placed the chip, my chip, on her chest.

"Sophia, I brought the MindSync," he said, his voice full of a tenderness he had once used for me. "You'll never feel pain again."

As the MindSync began to integrate with her, I felt my own mind slipping further away. A countdown started in the logical part of my brain that remained. Seven days. In seven days, I would be completely catatonic.

I managed to get inside the building, my movements stiff and uncoordinated. I found them in the lobby. Sophia, seeing me, feigned surprise and shrank into Mark's arms.

"Mark, who is she?" she asked, her voice trembling. "She's terrifying!"

Mark glared at me, his arms wrapped protectively around her.

"What are you doing here? Are you trying to scare Sophia? Her condition just stabilized; she can't handle this kind of stress!"

My eyes welled up with a forgotten wetness. For three years, he held me just like that. Now, it was Sophia in his arms, in my place.

"Can I have my MindSync back?" I asked, my voice thin. The core was now integrated with her, I knew that, but the original chip, the physical shell, was my only hope. My mentor, Dr. Chen, might be able to use it to save me. Being human, even an artificial one, was so precious. I didn't want to become a vegetable.

Mark frowned, his patience wearing thin.

"Sophia's condition isn't stable yet. Once she's fully recovered, I'll return your MindSync."

"But..." I only had seven days. Dr. Chen' s lab was far away, a remote facility in the mountains. I needed to leave now.

He cut me off, his voice sharp.

"I said, once Sophia is cured, I'll take you back to our penthouse. What's the big deal? You're just a broken AI. What does it matter if you have your MindSync or not? Sophia has suffered so much. You're not human, how could you possibly understand her pain?"

Even without my emotional core, a dull ache throbbed in my chest. Three years of marriage, and in his eyes, I was never a person. I was just a tool.

"Okay," I whispered, the tears finally falling.

In the past, the sight of my tears would have made him drop everything to comfort me. This time, he took a hesitant step toward me, a flicker of something in his eyes. But before he could speak, Sophia clutched her chest and groaned.

Mark froze, instantly turning back to her.

"Sophia, what's wrong?"

She collapsed into his arms, her voice tearful and weak.

"Maybe it's just the MindSync integrating. My chest feels so tight..." She paused, then weakly tugged his sleeve, a picture of selfless concern. "Don't worry about me. Ava must be in more pain without her MindSync..."

Before she finished, her face went pale, and she clutched at her shirt.

Mark didn't even glance back at me.

"She's fine, isn't she? Losing a MindSync is nothing. It' s just a piece of code. If Sophia needed a new limb, I'd just 3D print her one."

He scooped Sophia into his arms, his movements swift and sure.

"I'm taking you to the private clinic. It'll help with your recovery."

I watched them leave, my tears streaming down my face, splattering on the polished marble floor. He had always told me that even if I were a lifeless machine, seeing me hurt would tear him apart.

Every word had been a lie, a carefully crafted ploy to get his hands on my MindSync.