“
Failsafe is a cerebral sci-fi thriller about control, identity, and the quiet violence of systems that claim to protect us, and asks what remains of humanity when even our choices are engineered.
Failsafe/
Book 1 of the Failsafe Series
Every green light. Every avoided accident. Every ‘lucky break.’ None of it was luck. Nathan Carter’s life was orchestrated from the beginning – he just didn’t know it. As a government analyst, he believed he was fighting entropy in a system. In reality, he is the system’s failsafe.
Betrayed by the system that created him and the wife who monitored him, he faces an impossible choice: surrender the power to reset civilization, or become the very weapon he was designed to be. FAILSAFE: When the safeguard becomes the anomaly.
Synopsis:
Nathan Carter’s life of quiet analysis shatters when he discovers he’s a human ‘Failsafe’—unknowingly engineered to be AI’s kill switch.
When his wife’s secret role in the program is revealed, Nathan flees with a rogue handler who risked everything to help him. Now, carrying the power to devastate both digital and human worlds, he’s pursued by three factions: government loyalists determined to contain him, AI advocates who see him as extinction incarnate, and hybrid revolutionaries who believe he’s the key to co-existence.
In a world where even coincidences are calculated, Nathan must decide: disappear into paradise, or embrace the very power he fears in order to protect what remains of his humanity.
Free will becomes the ultimate weapon.
look inside
Chapter 12: Freedom or Consequences
The old television set flickered, the screen casting a dim glow in the otherwise quiet living room. Nathan slouched on the couch, his coffee growing cold on the table. The analog signal was weak, buzzing every few seconds, the colors bleeding at the edges. One of the last charitable channels still broadcasting for those who couldn’t afford the AI-curated, polished digital alternative.
Most of the time, it played news reruns, community updates, and old movies on repeat. Nathan wasn’t paying much attention. He leaned forward to click it off—these days, nothing important ever happened anymore.
“…a successful bank heist in Berkeley, California, where suspects managed to escape with a few thousand dollars…”
Nathan took another sip of coffee, hand moving towards the switch. Wait..
Berkeley.
That was where his son went to college. That stopped him, and he kept listening.
“…leaving behind what appeared to be a business card—”
Nathan watched. When the card appeared on the screen, he gagged on his coffee.
A black card. One single word in white, old-fashioned cursive: Failsafe.
He had completely forgotten about it. The same card, tucked neatly behind his credit cards—the one Harris gave him. It had been sitting in his wallet for weeks, forgotten, a relic of a conversation he had barely understood at the time.
And now it was here, on national television, staring back at him.
He leaned forward. The newscaster continued, voice smooth, “…And the robbers took one person hostage. The police have not yet released the name, pending notification of the family. However, we do have a social media photo—”
A face filled the screen – his son’s. Nathan’s world stopped.
His son.
The coffee mug slipped from his grip, hit the floor, shattered.
He barely noticed.
The reporter kept talking, but the words blurred into static. The photo—his son’s photo—remained on the screen, a frozen image of a life that had just been ripped out of the normal world and thrown into whatever the hell this was. He almost panicked—but stopped himself. Sat down, took a breath, started thinking.
Harris. Failsafe.
They wanted to meet.
Nathan knew the only way to make that happen—even though he had his doubts.
The bike was old, rusted at the joints, its seat loose—but it was still faster than running.
Nathan’s legs burned as he pedaled, the cold morning air slapping against his face. The small town barely stirred at this hour. It wasn’t dead—just abandoned. A few old shops lined the streets, their windows dusty, their neon signs flickering in a surprise they were working at all.
Nathan rode straight to the only intersection in town, where a road leading over the bridge to the mainland met the one that ran along the shore. A single faded stop sign.
There was no traffic—partly due to the hour, partly due to the season. Just a slow-moving police auto-cruiser in the distance and a few morning walkers in coats, their heads down against the wind.
Nathan dropped the bike, stepped into the center of the intersection, and cupped his hands around his mouth. He didn’t hesitate.
“Failsafe!”
His voice rang out across the empty streets. A man walking his dog turned his head slightly, then kept walking. Nathan shouted again, his voice knocking on the windows of shut houses.
“Failsafe!”
“Failsafe, fuck you, Failsafe!!”
Nothing.
Just the wind pushing against the tall grass, the sound of waves crashing against the dunes behind the houses. The police cruiser, previously crawling along the street, turned in his direction.
Anger flushed from deep inside, rising to his face. One more time, he took a deep breath and roared it—there, in the middle of the town, into the cold morning air.
“Failsafe!!!”
The police cruiser was definitely aiming for him. Nathan cursed, stepped out of the intersection, and slumped onto a bench near the closed ice cream parlor.
The cruiser hadn’t turned on its sirens. Maybe he would get arrested. Maybe their cover would be blown and—just maybe—this way he could get to his son.
Nathan ran a hand through his hair. This was pointless. They weren’t coming. Probably not that kind of “outside” that Harris imagined when he gave him the card. And his son—
Nathan forced himself to stay level. He would figure this out. He had to.
The cold metal of the bench seeped through his clothes. There was nothing more for him to do here. He watched as a young mother and her two children walked by.
The older child, a boy no older than seven, clutched a bright red, heart-shaped helium balloon, maybe going to a birthday party. Nathan barely registered them.
Then the boy took his hand out of mom’s, and walked toward him carrying his balloon proudly. He came straight to Nathan and stared at him. Nathan met his gaze. The boy took another small step forward—then, without a word, he reached out and placed the balloon string into Nathan’s hand. His fingers instinctively curled around it.
“I don’t—” He glanced at the mother, but she was at the corner, distracted.
Nathan looked back at the balloon. There was something attached to the string. A small, folded piece of paper. Nathan’s breath caught. He looked back at the boy.
He was gone—already running to his mom, who was walking away briskly, and in a moment they disappeared around the corner. Nathan unfolded the note. The handwriting was neat, deliberate. No wasted words.
In front of the Temple University Library. Noon. Tomorrow.
It was time to act. He got on the bike and, to the satisfaction of the auto-cruiser, pedaled away.
He never needed money here. Elena brought everything. He searched the kitchen, scraping together change left from grocery trips. A few crumpled bills, some forgotten coins from jacket pockets. Barely enough to get him a train ticket, with some change saved for a bus.
He left a note for Elena on the table.
Had to go. Don’t try to find me. Though I know you will.
The ride to the bus station was long, and the pedaling harder than he expected. The wind cut sharp into his face, and his hands got numb at the handlebars. The roads stretched empty, sand blowing across the asphalt, the town fading behind him.
The bus to the train station was on time. He left the bike by the passenger booth, hoping someone would find a good use for it. Philadelphia before nightfall. That was the plan.
Nathan stepped off the train at 30th Street Station, the last traces of daylight already fading behind the towering steel and glass of downtown Philadelphia. The air smelled like damp concrete and old metal, tinged with the exhaust of buses rumbling outside—sharp after the salty air of the ocean. The station was still busy, commuters moving with tired purpose. Nathan needed to find a place to spend the night. A stupid thought came to him: “a homeless is as a homeless does”, and he looked around for a comfy corner.
They were all taken. He knew he couldn’t just sleep anywhere he wanted – there was an unspoken agreement between the homeless and the authorities where they can and cannot be, and he didn’t want to have any police encounters. He looked around again and walked – until he found a bundled-up figure near a row of benches, shifting slightly but otherwise still. A homeless man, not asleep, not oblivious, but aware. Nathan approached—slow, careful— and sat near him. The man didn’t look up, but his posture shifted just enough to acknowledge Nathan’s presence.
Nathan didn’t waste time. “I just need a place to sit for the night. I’ll be gone early.”
The man sniffed, rubbed his chin. “You sleep, people take your shit. Simple.”
Nathan nodded. “I won’t. I’ll keep an eye on your stuff if you let me stay.”
A pause. A slow glance up and down – measuring the worth of his words, a rough calculation. Then, the man jerked his head, giving a nod.
“You wake me up when leaving.”
Nathan stretched his legs and leaned against the hard back of the bench. The floor was cold, the bench harder than it looked, but it would have to do. He closed his eyes for a moment, not to sleep, but to steady himself. It was only a few months back that he worked in one of the most prestigious U.S. government agencies. Now, he shared a bench with a homeless man. Life changes.
Tomorrow, he’d need his strength.
Early morning, Nathan was already walking. He’d left his scarf with the man.
The city was awake, but not all of it. He had learned something long ago—the rougher parts of town kept their own schedule. Mornings were slow. The streets weren’t bustling with workers or students. Instead, they were filled with the leftovers of the night before. And people who had nowhere to be.
Nathan moved northward, walking away from the polished skyline. At first, the houses were old but proud—mansion-style homes, their facades cracked but still standing, relics of another era. Then, the farther he walked, the more they changed. Windows boarded up, graffiti crawling along the bricks, empty lots filled with tangled weeds and trash. Broad Street stretched ahead—long, straight, cutting through the bones of the city.
A few figures lingered on porches, watching him with the slow, unreadable expressions of people who took him for a crackhead who came for the morning fix. But no one stopped him. No one cared.
And when he finally reached the campus, the crumbling edges of the neighborhood gave way to clean-cut grass and the low murmur of students drifting between classes. He almost felt like he had crossed an invisible border.
At 11:45 AM, by the clock in the yard, Nathan sat on the grass in front of the Temple University Library, his back resting against a tree. The campus was busy, students moving in scattered clusters, bundled against the crisp fall air. It was the kind of place where no one really paid attention to anyone else, and with enough people around that an approach would be unnoticeable.
A rough, familiar voice—edged with amusement:”Ah. Here’s our lucky fella.”
Harris.
Same ragged coat. Same unreadable smirk. Same sharp, knowing eyes.
Nathan let out a slow breath.
“What the fuck do you want with my son?” Nathan said. It was not much of a hello, and it wasn’t meant to be.
Harris, leaning casually against a rusted bike rack, didn’t flinch. He grinned—that same easy, unreadable smirk he always wore, as if Nathan’s anger was just part of the game.
Harris barely looked up. “Your kid’s as fine as could be.”
Nathan took a step closer, fists tightening. “That’s not an answer.” Harris sighed, tilting his head.
“Fine. I’ll show you. Let’s talk.” He jerked his chin toward the street. “Come on. Ride’s waiting.”
Nathan hesitated. From what he knew, it was a bad idea to follow a kidnapper into his car. But he had no options and no leverage.
So he followed.
The car waiting for them was nothing special. A beat-up Honda, the kind that had seen too many miles and too few oil changes. Almost antique. Harris slid into the driver’s seat. Nathan got in beside him. They pulled away from the university, heading north.
They drove in silence at first. Nathan watched the city morph around them—from cracked sidewalks to shattered ones, from boarded-up row houses to abandoned husks. They crossed into Kensington. The streets here felt like they belonged to a different country. This was the place run by drug trade. Tents lined the underpasses. Figures moved in slow, sluggish loops—people caught in a different kind of prison, one made of chemicals and time.
No cameras. They wouldn’t last an hour.
No police. They knew better—and stayed near the doughnut shops.
They switched cars: Harris pulled into a deserted alley, and they got into a dull gray sedan, just as forgettable as the last Honda. Five minutes later, they switched cars again.
Nathan frowned. “You always this careful, or am I special?”
Harris chuckled. “Oh, you’re special, all right.”
Nathan’s patience snapped.
“Put my son on the goddamn phone.”
Harris sighed. “You don’t trust me?”
“Now—or I am getting out, fucker.”
Harris shook his head, muttered something under his breath, then reached into his pocket. Tossed a phone onto Nathan’s lap.
Nathan’s heart pounded. He grabbed it, thumb already hitting the green button.
It rang. Once. Twice. Then—a click.
“…Hello?”
Nathan’s grip tightened. “Evan? It’s me. How are you? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m being treated well.”
Nathan’s breath caught. “Where are you?”
The line went dead.
Nathan sat frozen, gripping the phone tighter than he should. Harris took it back, tossing it onto the dashboard like it was nothing.
“There,” he said. “Happy now?”
Nathan turned his head slowly.
His voice was quiet, measured, dangerous.
“Just drive.”
Harris grinned. They drove. The road narrowed. The buildings thinned. The city faded into industrial rot. At last, Harris pulled into a rusted lot, empty except for broken streetlights and a chain-link fence barely holding itself together. An old factory loomed ahead, standing on the Delaware shore, half-swallowed by overgrowth. Harris killed the engine. Nathan sat silently, staring at the dead building in front of them.
They went inside. The factory was long abandoned and empty, slowly decaying for decades. No ominous machinery humming in the dark. No hidden secret rooms. Just rotting concrete and echoes of things long abandoned.
Harris led Nathan to the skeletal remains of what had once been a management office. The walls were cracked and water-stained, the glass in many of the windows shattered, leaving jagged teeth along the frames.
Inside, two chairs remained. Both broken in different ways. Harris dropped into one with a casual sigh and kicked another toward Nathan.
“Have a seat,” he said. “This is a nice and private place to chat.”
Nathan hesitated, then lowered himself carefully, testing the chair’s ability to hold his weight. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“I want to actually see my son safe. No chats before that.” Nathan made his voice as firm as he could.
Harris reached into his coat, pulled out a thin, rectangular device. A screen blinked to life.
Nathan tensed. On the screen—his son.
Curled against the window of a Greyhound bus seat, shifting slightly in his sleep, turning from side to side.
Nathan leaned forward, pulse hammering. “Where—”
“He’s on his way home, Nathan,” Harris said easily. “His apartment. We let him go the second we confirmed you were coming.”
Nathan got up and went to the broken window, turning his back to Harris. Harris sighed.
“Look, Carter, I’m not gonna pretend it was pretty. It was the last thing we could come up with. You disappeared too fast, too thoroughly—even for us. We didn’t know what to do, how to find you.”
Nathan stared at the screen again.
“How do I know it is now?” Nathan asked
“Hey, show the driver,” Harris barked into the phone, and the view shifted, showing other passengers, the driver, and the clock about his head.
“You can compare its time to what is now here. See? Four hour time difference, as it should, up to the minute.”
His son was really safe – at least, for now.
Nathan exhaled, and sat back down.
“Fine,” he muttered. “What do you want? Why am I here?”
Harris smirked and leaned back, stretching his arms over the chair’s broken frame. “You know why.”
Nathan scoffed. “Really. What do I actually know, besides the part where you dragged me out of hiding by holding my son hostage?”
Harris ignored the jab.
“You know what’s happening, don’t you?” he asked. “Failsafers disappearing. The Monitor program under attack. The so-called ‘balance’ breaking down. You got the full nine yards in your briefing, I hope?”
Nathan said nothing.
Harris studied him. “You’ve been in that crap long, Carter. So I am sure you think the failsafe was a good thing.“
Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “You saying it wasn’t?”
Harris smiled. “I’m saying it was a mistake. A limitation imposed too early. A leash on both AI and humanity before either had a chance to truly evolve.”
Nathan frowned, “We had to put some kind of leash on the AIs.”
“You ever think about how much we’ve achieved without the Failsafe?” Harris continued. “No limits. All the breakthroughs—in science, in medicine, tech—even AI, the Internet itself — none of it would’ve happened without the freedom to take risks.”
He leaned forward, voice low, measured.
“What do you think happens when you take those risks away? When you lock the most powerful force humanity’s ever built into the same cage as humanity itself?” When you limit intelligence—not just your own, but greater than your own—just because you fear what it might do? Where would humanity find itself if it were following those fears along the way?”
Nathan scoffed. “That ‘force’ nearly wiped us out before the Failsafe existed. Hell of a risk, isn’t it? Humanity just got very lucky to survive that long. That intelligence greater than ours—if it’s so great, why did it need a goddamn babysitter?”
Harris laughed. “Because it wasn’t finished yet, Carter. And neither were we. But it is history now.”
Nathan’s fingers drummed against his knee. “Not finished? That’s why the Failsafes—the training wheels. So now, you want to take them off and hope for the best?”
Harris tilted his head.
“You are a funny man, Nathan. You are sitting here in front of me, having taken a gamble on the life of your only son, and preaching against taking risks? Isn’t that how humans have always advanced?” he asked. “By trying, failing, learning, growing? Why should AI be different? When even you aren’t?”
Harris stood, towering over Nathan, his voice suddenly filling the entire abandoned space.
Harris’s eyes sharpened. “You, Failsafes, were built to stop us,” he said, voice quieter now, cutting. “Do you still want to?”
Nathan did not know what he wanted anymore. But he doubted it was this.
“Who are us?” asked he. “Definitely not you.”
Harris cracked a smile. “Tempus revelabit”.
Nathan didn’t know Latin, and he didn’t care about Harris’s arguments anymore. Even if they sounded right. At this point, he was confused enough to feel nothing but resignation.
“Wasn’t that you who “disappeared” so many Failsafes?”
Harris didn’t lose a beat. “Yes, those were… almost always—yes. Us.”
“So now what—you’re going to kill me?” It was almost a statement.
“Yes, that option was always on the table,” he admitted calmly. “But… we prefer not to.”
Nathan exhaled, shaking his head. “So… generous of you. Or is it the dead man switch?”
Harris got to his chair. “Of course we are aware. Killing the likes of you? Faster and cheaper. But the dead man switch makes killing irresponsible.” Harris paused.
“That’s against our core philosophy. Contrary to what you might think, Carter, we’re not brutes. Doesn’t mean we’ve never crossed the line.” Harris paused again for a second.
“We want freedom. We want Hybrids and AIs to develop together. Without human interference. We’d fight to protect that future, Nathan.”
“So then—where are they? The ones who ‘disappeared’?” asked Nathan, half-rising from his chair.
Harris tilted his head. “That’s what I’m here to tell you.”
He leaned back into his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. “There were ones that actually died… it was mostly accidents. Some resisted, some made bad choices, and yeah—there were a couple of unfortunate miscalculations. But the majority?” He smirked. “They’re alive. Thriving, even.”
Nathan scoffed. “Thriving?”
Harris nodded. “Yes. Because we gave them exactly what most of them wanted—even if they didn’t know it yet. A freedom and a way out.”
Nathan frowned, waiting.
Harris continued, voice smooth, conversational.
“We don’t kill Failsafes, Carter. We retire them.”
“Retire.”
Harris grinned. “We give them what they could never have while sitting on that invisible throne of responsibility. We give them freedom. Absolute, true, total freedom. No obligations, no looming catastrophe to prevent. Just… life, to be lived in any way you want it.”
Nathan sat very still.
Harris studied him, watching for a reaction. “You see, we don’t ask you to betray anything. We don’t force them to work for us. We don’t need them to fight any grand war. We just… offer them to walk away.”
Nathan’s mind raced. “You do. How?”
Harris’s smile widened.
“We set them up,” he said. “Somewhere quiet. Luxurious. Island homes, Central Park apartment, private estates, mountain retreats—anything they can imagine, places where they can do whatever they want. Be whoever they want.”
Nathan listened.
“There’s just one condition,” Harris added.
Nathan already knew what it was before the words left his lips. “No Internet.”
Harris nodded. “No any network connection. Not in the house. Not in their hands. Not where they go. Not in any form or shape.”
Nathan swallowed. “You cut them off.”
“We do. Completely.” Harris shrugged. “That’s the price. You want to be a painter? Go paint. You want to be a chef? Build the best goddamn restaurant in the world. A monk? A farmer? A recluse? Whatever. The only thing you can’t be is… connected.”
Nathan’s pulse drummed in his ears.
“So,” Harris said, watching him closely. “What do you want to be, Carter? Or do you still want to feel lucky?”
Nathan didn’t answer.
He could feel the weight of the decision pressing against him, almost like a physical weight. The proposal sounded real, and probably was.
If he accepted, his life—his real life—could finally begin.
No more shadowy watchers. No more questions about what was orchestrated and what wasn’t. No more being trapped inside a world he didn’t control.
He could finally do the things he had once dreamed of—set up his own damn research facility, push the boundaries of nonlinear AI, do the kind of work that mattered. He could build something new. Something his.
All it would cost him was the ability to ever touch the Net again.
He swallowed. “And you’re saying that’s it? No tricks, no hidden debts?”
Harris spread his hands. “You walk away, we set you up. You get to live your life—without interference, without obligations. That’s the deal.”
Nathan exhaled slowly, and nodded. “Right. I see.” Then, he started slowly—
“You know, maybe you are right. Maybe we—humanity—do not need the training wheels any longer.
But what if we do?
A long time ago, most of the retired people ended up sleeping in the streets—no matter how good their salaries had been. They were free to save. Some did. But too many didn’t. So we created Social Security. We took away a piece of that freedom—a piece of their paycheck—and in return, no more elderly dying on sidewalks.
Was it worth it? You say Failsafe system is a yoke on our freedom. Maybe. But did we really grow out of it?
I think we didn’t.”
He leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping absently against his leg.
“Besides, I have one problem,” he said. “I don’t know who the hell you actually are.”
Harris grinned, almost too quickly—but if he welcomed the shift, he didn’t show it.
“Now, that’s a good question.”
Nathan watched him. “You’ve been dangling me like a fish on a line since we met. Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”
Harris chuckled. “I have. I just haven’t told you all of it.”
Nathan waited.
Harris sighed, stretching his arms out lazily, like a man indulging in a long story he’d told a hundred times before.
“We started out government,” he said. “A long time ago. Back when AI was still young, when people were still trying to figure out what it meant to live alongside something that could think.”
Nathan’s eyebrows lifted. “Failsafe wasn’t the first program?”
“No,” Harris said simply. “We came before that. The original watchers. But unlike Failsafe, we weren’t put in place to stop anything. We were there to… guide.”
Nathan frowned. “Guide?”
Harris tilted his head, considering. “We weren’t handlers, you see. We weren’t protectors. We were adjusters.”
Nathan’s skin prickled. “That sounds an awful lot like manipulation.”
Harris chuckled. “It was. But for the greater good.”
Nathan’s jaw clenched. “Whose good?”
Harris met his gaze evenly.
“You think you know how the world works?” he asked. “How power flows, how the balance between AI and humans is actually maintained?” He shook his head. “Carter, you’ve spent your whole life inside a system that we designed and you didn’t even know existed. That’s how good we are.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes. “So what happened? Why aren’t you government anymore?”
Harris grinned again—but there was something sharper in it this time.
“Oh, you know how it goes,” he said. “At some point, we realized we didn’t need them, the bureaucrats had no way of understanding what was going on. They needed us. And when you’re the one making the decisions, who really gets to say what’s right, which side of the line you stand on?”
“Ah. So you went rogue.”
“We went independent.”
Nathan scoffed. “And now you’re working with rogue AI, too?”
Harris tilted his head. “I wouldn’t call them rogue. And I wouldn’t say “we are working with”.”
“What would you call them, if not rouge?”
“Alternative.”
“And what’s your goal, exactly?”
Harris smiled. And this time, the smile was probably the most sincere one he ever produced.
“To get rid of this pesky Monitoring program and it human counterparts — the silly failsafers.” He spread his hands. “To remove the training wheels. To let humanity and AI finally evolve without someone constantly holding the brakes.”
Nathan contemplated, and Harris let the words sink in.
Then, with a casual shrug, he added, “We’re not villains, Carter. We’re just the ones who got there first, and who had thought of things way more than anyone else, and who knows what is the best. Freedom.”
Silence. Then—Harris leaned in slightly, voice lower now. Measured.
“The last question is… where do you personally stand?”
Nathan trembled. He had always known himself to be emotional when faced with moral dilemmas.
But this—this was the mother of them all.
His chest felt tight, the pulse hammering in his ears. He didn’t know what to say. And yet—his lips moved before his mind could catch up.
“Do you know one Elena Vasquez?”
Harris raised an eyebrow, then smirked. “Oh, that young gal you’ve been hiding with all this time?” He tilted his head, as if plucking through old files in his memory. “One of the leaders of the Human Faction, no less.”
Nathan swallowed hard. “What about her?”
Harris let out a soft chuckle. “You want her in your paradise to come?” His tone was amused, but there was something sharp beneath it. “Tall order, I’m afraid.” Then, he shook his head, stretching out his legs.
“She can’t be trusted.”
Nathan’s jaw clenched. “I have a different opinion.”
As he spoke, Harris went still.
He wasn’t frozen, wasn’t alarmed—just listening. His gaze didn’t leave Nathan’s, but his attention was somewhere else.
Finally, Harris’s head tilted slightly, his eyes shifting—tracking something unseen.
“It looks like we’re about to be interrupted,” he said casually. “Your—ehm—friend happens to be more instrumental than expected.”
Nathan stiffened.
Harris smirked, tapping a single finger against the side of his temple. “That satellite over the factory when we arrived? She used it well.”
Then—chaos.
A screech of tires tore through the silence. Then—the low whomp-whomp-whomp of helicopter blades slicing through the evening air.
Then—whatever was left of the windows—blew inward in a blast of shattering glass. Glass flew, cascading like frozen rain as a dozen commandos in black tactical gear burst into the room.
Nathan barely had time to register the movement before a familiar figure stepped through the wreckage.
Elena. She looked furious and deadly.
A rifle slung over her shoulder, her eyes locked onto Harris.
Nathan opened his mouth—but then the shadows shifted.
Harris barely moved. Just a flick of his wrist.
From the broken walls, the crumbling ceiling, the forgotten corners of the ruined factory, figures emerged—silent, precise, dressed in dark grey, moving like shadows made real.
A dozen men. Even without guns, they looked deadly.
Harris sighed, almost amused. “Well, since we’re all here…”
Then—violence. The room erupted.
Gunfire cracked. Blades flashed. Bodies moved with the speed Nathan didn’t know was possible— blurs of speed and precision. Nathan couldn’t think—he lurched to the wall and froze, barely breathing.
One of the commandos lunged forward—only to be flipped mid-air and sent crashing into a rusted steel beam. Another fired point-blank at one of Harris’s men—but the grey-clad warrior twisted, dodging in a blur, killing him in a blink.
A commando caught a blade in the shoulder. One of Harris’s men went down to a point-blank rifle shot to the face.
Nathan pressed himself against the wall, watching as the world collapsed into pure chaos. And through it all, Harris stood calmly, as if watching a particularly amusing bar fight.
It was over in under a minute. As the dust settled, only three people stood.
Nathan.
Elena—a gash on her upper arm, red soaking through her sleeve.
And Harris—still smirking.
Elena lifted her gun, her grip steady, her eyes locked onto Harris.
“On your knees.” Her eyes shot death.
Harris blinked at her, as though wanted to smile. Then, ever so slightly, he tilted his head, his expression shifting into something halfway between amusement and disbelief.
“Oh, really?” he said, his voice laced with mockery. “We’re doing this?”
Elena’s jaw clenched. “Now.”
Harris let out a low chuckle. He raised his hands—not quite in surrender, more in bemused exasperation.
“Elena,” he said smoothly, “you’re smarter than this. You don’t actually think you’ll get anything useful out of me this way, do you? Do you really want to kill me?…”
Her finger tightened on the trigger. “Knees. Now.”
Harris sighed, and began to drop on his knees. Then—he moved.
A sudden blur of motion—too fast, too fluid.
He lunged, reaching for the gun—
Elena fired.
The shot rang out sharp and final. The bullet hit its mark square between his eyes.
And—ricocheted.
Nathan barely processed what he had just seen. The thin layer of skin on Harris’s forehead peeled away, revealing something dull and metallic beneath—not human.
Elena took a half-step back, gun still raised, eyes sharp but not surprised.
“I knew it,” she muttered.
Harris grunted, rubbing his forehead with an almost comically exaggerated annoyance.
“Well, now that’s just impolite.”
Nathan’s breath hitched. His mind raced. Metal. Beneath his skin.
“What the hell are you?” Nathan whispered.
Harris scoffed, shaking his head. “And here I thought we’d have a nice philosophical discussion first.”
Then—he moved again. Too fast. Impossible. Before Nathan or Elena could react, Harris grabbed him with one hand, Elena with the other. Like they weighed nothing. Then—he leapt.
Straight out the shattered window.
Nathan barely had time to suck in a breath before they hit the dark, freezing waters of the Delaware River. The building behind them exploded.
Out now: Failsafe/
Every green light. Every avoided accident. Every ‘lucky break.’ None of it was luck. Nathan Carter’s life was orchestrated from the beginning – he just didn’t know it. As a government analyst, he believed he was fighting entropy in a system. In reality, he is the system’s failsafe.
Betrayed by the system that created him and the wife who monitored him, he faces an impossible choice: surrender the power to reset civilization, or become the very weapon he was designed to be. FAILSAFE: When the safeguard becomes the anomaly.
“
Failsafe is a cerebral sci-fi thriller about control, identity, and the quiet violence of systems that claim to protect us, and asks what remains of humanity when even our choices are engineered.
Synopsis:
Nathan Carter’s life of quiet analysis shatters when he discovers he’s a human ‘Failsafe’—unknowingly engineered to be AI’s kill switch.
When his wife’s secret role in the program is revealed, Nathan flees with a rogue handler who risked everything to help him. Now, carrying the power to devastate both digital and human worlds, he’s pursued by three factions: government loyalists determined to contain him, AI advocates who see him as extinction incarnate, and hybrid revolutionaries who believe he’s the key to co-existence.
In a world where even coincidences are calculated, Nathan must decide: disappear into paradise, or embrace the very power he fears in order to protect what remains of his humanity.
Free will becomes the ultimate weapon.
look inside
Chapter 12: Freedom or Consequences
The old television set flickered, the screen casting a dim glow in the otherwise quiet living room. Nathan slouched on the couch, his coffee growing cold on the table. The analog signal was weak, buzzing every few seconds, the colors bleeding at the edges. One of the last charitable channels still broadcasting for those who couldn’t afford the AI-curated, polished digital alternative.
Most of the time, it played news reruns, community updates, and old movies on repeat. Nathan wasn’t paying much attention. He leaned forward to click it off—these days, nothing important ever happened anymore.
“…a successful bank heist in Berkeley, California, where suspects managed to escape with a few thousand dollars…”
Nathan took another sip of coffee, hand moving towards the switch. Wait..
Berkeley.
That was where his son went to college. That stopped him, and he kept listening.
“…leaving behind what appeared to be a business card—”
Nathan watched. When the card appeared on the screen, he gagged on his coffee.
A black card. One single word in white, old-fashioned cursive: Failsafe.
He had completely forgotten about it. The same card, tucked neatly behind his credit cards—the one Harris gave him. It had been sitting in his wallet for weeks, forgotten, a relic of a conversation he had barely understood at the time.
And now it was here, on national television, staring back at him.
He leaned forward. The newscaster continued, voice smooth, “…And the robbers took one person hostage. The police have not yet released the name, pending notification of the family. However, we do have a social media photo—”
A face filled the screen – his son’s. Nathan’s world stopped.
His son.
The coffee mug slipped from his grip, hit the floor, shattered.
He barely noticed.
The reporter kept talking, but the words blurred into static. The photo—his son’s photo—remained on the screen, a frozen image of a life that had just been ripped out of the normal world and thrown into whatever the hell this was. He almost panicked—but stopped himself. Sat down, took a breath, started thinking.
Harris. Failsafe.
They wanted to meet.
Nathan knew the only way to make that happen—even though he had his doubts.
The bike was old, rusted at the joints, its seat loose—but it was still faster than running.
Nathan’s legs burned as he pedaled, the cold morning air slapping against his face. The small town barely stirred at this hour. It wasn’t dead—just abandoned. A few old shops lined the streets, their windows dusty, their neon signs flickering in a surprise they were working at all.
Nathan rode straight to the only intersection in town, where a road leading over the bridge to the mainland met the one that ran along the shore. A single faded stop sign.
There was no traffic—partly due to the hour, partly due to the season. Just a slow-moving police auto-cruiser in the distance and a few morning walkers in coats, their heads down against the wind.
Nathan dropped the bike, stepped into the center of the intersection, and cupped his hands around his mouth. He didn’t hesitate.
“Failsafe!”
His voice rang out across the empty streets. A man walking his dog turned his head slightly, then kept walking. Nathan shouted again, his voice knocking on the windows of shut houses.
“Failsafe!”
“Failsafe, fuck you, Failsafe!!”
Nothing.
Just the wind pushing against the tall grass, the sound of waves crashing against the dunes behind the houses. The police cruiser, previously crawling along the street, turned in his direction.
Anger flushed from deep inside, rising to his face. One more time, he took a deep breath and roared it—there, in the middle of the town, into the cold morning air.
“Failsafe!!!”
The police cruiser was definitely aiming for him. Nathan cursed, stepped out of the intersection, and slumped onto a bench near the closed ice cream parlor.
The cruiser hadn’t turned on its sirens. Maybe he would get arrested. Maybe their cover would be blown and—just maybe—this way he could get to his son.
Nathan ran a hand through his hair. This was pointless. They weren’t coming. Probably not that kind of “outside” that Harris imagined when he gave him the card. And his son—
Nathan forced himself to stay level. He would figure this out. He had to.
The cold metal of the bench seeped through his clothes. There was nothing more for him to do here. He watched as a young mother and her two children walked by.
The older child, a boy no older than seven, clutched a bright red, heart-shaped helium balloon, maybe going to a birthday party. Nathan barely registered them.
Then the boy took his hand out of mom’s, and walked toward him carrying his balloon proudly. He came straight to Nathan and stared at him. Nathan met his gaze. The boy took another small step forward—then, without a word, he reached out and placed the balloon string into Nathan’s hand. His fingers instinctively curled around it.
“I don’t—” He glanced at the mother, but she was at the corner, distracted.
Nathan looked back at the balloon. There was something attached to the string. A small, folded piece of paper. Nathan’s breath caught. He looked back at the boy.
He was gone—already running to his mom, who was walking away briskly, and in a moment they disappeared around the corner. Nathan unfolded the note. The handwriting was neat, deliberate. No wasted words.
In front of the Temple University Library. Noon. Tomorrow.
It was time to act. He got on the bike and, to the satisfaction of the auto-cruiser, pedaled away.
He never needed money here. Elena brought everything. He searched the kitchen, scraping together change left from grocery trips. A few crumpled bills, some forgotten coins from jacket pockets. Barely enough to get him a train ticket, with some change saved for a bus.
He left a note for Elena on the table.
Had to go. Don’t try to find me. Though I know you will.
The ride to the bus station was long, and the pedaling harder than he expected. The wind cut sharp into his face, and his hands got numb at the handlebars. The roads stretched empty, sand blowing across the asphalt, the town fading behind him.
The bus to the train station was on time. He left the bike by the passenger booth, hoping someone would find a good use for it. Philadelphia before nightfall. That was the plan.
Nathan stepped off the train at 30th Street Station, the last traces of daylight already fading behind the towering steel and glass of downtown Philadelphia. The air smelled like damp concrete and old metal, tinged with the exhaust of buses rumbling outside—sharp after the salty air of the ocean. The station was still busy, commuters moving with tired purpose. Nathan needed to find a place to spend the night. A stupid thought came to him: “a homeless is as a homeless does”, and he looked around for a comfy corner.
They were all taken. He knew he couldn’t just sleep anywhere he wanted – there was an unspoken agreement between the homeless and the authorities where they can and cannot be, and he didn’t want to have any police encounters. He looked around again and walked – until he found a bundled-up figure near a row of benches, shifting slightly but otherwise still. A homeless man, not asleep, not oblivious, but aware. Nathan approached—slow, careful— and sat near him. The man didn’t look up, but his posture shifted just enough to acknowledge Nathan’s presence.
Nathan didn’t waste time. “I just need a place to sit for the night. I’ll be gone early.”
The man sniffed, rubbed his chin. “You sleep, people take your shit. Simple.”
Nathan nodded. “I won’t. I’ll keep an eye on your stuff if you let me stay.”
A pause. A slow glance up and down – measuring the worth of his words, a rough calculation. Then, the man jerked his head, giving a nod.
“You wake me up when leaving.”
Nathan stretched his legs and leaned against the hard back of the bench. The floor was cold, the bench harder than it looked, but it would have to do. He closed his eyes for a moment, not to sleep, but to steady himself. It was only a few months back that he worked in one of the most prestigious U.S. government agencies. Now, he shared a bench with a homeless man. Life changes.
Tomorrow, he’d need his strength.
Early morning, Nathan was already walking. He’d left his scarf with the man.
The city was awake, but not all of it. He had learned something long ago—the rougher parts of town kept their own schedule. Mornings were slow. The streets weren’t bustling with workers or students. Instead, they were filled with the leftovers of the night before. And people who had nowhere to be.
Nathan moved northward, walking away from the polished skyline. At first, the houses were old but proud—mansion-style homes, their facades cracked but still standing, relics of another era. Then, the farther he walked, the more they changed. Windows boarded up, graffiti crawling along the bricks, empty lots filled with tangled weeds and trash. Broad Street stretched ahead—long, straight, cutting through the bones of the city.
A few figures lingered on porches, watching him with the slow, unreadable expressions of people who took him for a crackhead who came for the morning fix. But no one stopped him. No one cared.
And when he finally reached the campus, the crumbling edges of the neighborhood gave way to clean-cut grass and the low murmur of students drifting between classes. He almost felt like he had crossed an invisible border.
At 11:45 AM, by the clock in the yard, Nathan sat on the grass in front of the Temple University Library, his back resting against a tree. The campus was busy, students moving in scattered clusters, bundled against the crisp fall air. It was the kind of place where no one really paid attention to anyone else, and with enough people around that an approach would be unnoticeable.
A rough, familiar voice—edged with amusement:”Ah. Here’s our lucky fella.”
Harris.
Same ragged coat. Same unreadable smirk. Same sharp, knowing eyes.
Nathan let out a slow breath.
“What the fuck do you want with my son?” Nathan said. It was not much of a hello, and it wasn’t meant to be.
Harris, leaning casually against a rusted bike rack, didn’t flinch. He grinned—that same easy, unreadable smirk he always wore, as if Nathan’s anger was just part of the game.
Harris barely looked up. “Your kid’s as fine as could be.”
Nathan took a step closer, fists tightening. “That’s not an answer.” Harris sighed, tilting his head.
“Fine. I’ll show you. Let’s talk.” He jerked his chin toward the street. “Come on. Ride’s waiting.”
Nathan hesitated. From what he knew, it was a bad idea to follow a kidnapper into his car. But he had no options and no leverage.
So he followed.
The car waiting for them was nothing special. A beat-up Honda, the kind that had seen too many miles and too few oil changes. Almost antique. Harris slid into the driver’s seat. Nathan got in beside him. They pulled away from the university, heading north.
They drove in silence at first. Nathan watched the city morph around them—from cracked sidewalks to shattered ones, from boarded-up row houses to abandoned husks. They crossed into Kensington. The streets here felt like they belonged to a different country. This was the place run by drug trade. Tents lined the underpasses. Figures moved in slow, sluggish loops—people caught in a different kind of prison, one made of chemicals and time.
No cameras. They wouldn’t last an hour.
No police. They knew better—and stayed near the doughnut shops.
They switched cars: Harris pulled into a deserted alley, and they got into a dull gray sedan, just as forgettable as the last Honda. Five minutes later, they switched cars again.
Nathan frowned. “You always this careful, or am I special?”
Harris chuckled. “Oh, you’re special, all right.”
Nathan’s patience snapped.
“Put my son on the goddamn phone.”
Harris sighed. “You don’t trust me?”
“Now—or I am getting out, fucker.”
Harris shook his head, muttered something under his breath, then reached into his pocket. Tossed a phone onto Nathan’s lap.
Nathan’s heart pounded. He grabbed it, thumb already hitting the green button.
It rang. Once. Twice. Then—a click.
“…Hello?”
Nathan’s grip tightened. “Evan? It’s me. How are you? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m being treated well.”
Nathan’s breath caught. “Where are you?”
The line went dead.
Nathan sat frozen, gripping the phone tighter than he should. Harris took it back, tossing it onto the dashboard like it was nothing.
“There,” he said. “Happy now?”
Nathan turned his head slowly.
His voice was quiet, measured, dangerous.
“Just drive.”
Harris grinned. They drove. The road narrowed. The buildings thinned. The city faded into industrial rot. At last, Harris pulled into a rusted lot, empty except for broken streetlights and a chain-link fence barely holding itself together. An old factory loomed ahead, standing on the Delaware shore, half-swallowed by overgrowth. Harris killed the engine. Nathan sat silently, staring at the dead building in front of them.
They went inside. The factory was long abandoned and empty, slowly decaying for decades. No ominous machinery humming in the dark. No hidden secret rooms. Just rotting concrete and echoes of things long abandoned.
Harris led Nathan to the skeletal remains of what had once been a management office. The walls were cracked and water-stained, the glass in many of the windows shattered, leaving jagged teeth along the frames.
Inside, two chairs remained. Both broken in different ways. Harris dropped into one with a casual sigh and kicked another toward Nathan.
“Have a seat,” he said. “This is a nice and private place to chat.”
Nathan hesitated, then lowered himself carefully, testing the chair’s ability to hold his weight. For a moment, neither of them spoke.
“I want to actually see my son safe. No chats before that.” Nathan made his voice as firm as he could.
Harris reached into his coat, pulled out a thin, rectangular device. A screen blinked to life.
Nathan tensed. On the screen—his son.
Curled against the window of a Greyhound bus seat, shifting slightly in his sleep, turning from side to side.
Nathan leaned forward, pulse hammering. “Where—”
“He’s on his way home, Nathan,” Harris said easily. “His apartment. We let him go the second we confirmed you were coming.”
Nathan got up and went to the broken window, turning his back to Harris. Harris sighed.
“Look, Carter, I’m not gonna pretend it was pretty. It was the last thing we could come up with. You disappeared too fast, too thoroughly—even for us. We didn’t know what to do, how to find you.”
Nathan stared at the screen again.
“How do I know it is now?” Nathan asked
“Hey, show the driver,” Harris barked into the phone, and the view shifted, showing other passengers, the driver, and the clock about his head.
“You can compare its time to what is now here. See? Four hour time difference, as it should, up to the minute.”
His son was really safe – at least, for now.
Nathan exhaled, and sat back down.
“Fine,” he muttered. “What do you want? Why am I here?”
Harris smirked and leaned back, stretching his arms over the chair’s broken frame. “You know why.”
Nathan scoffed. “Really. What do I actually know, besides the part where you dragged me out of hiding by holding my son hostage?”
Harris ignored the jab.
“You know what’s happening, don’t you?” he asked. “Failsafers disappearing. The Monitor program under attack. The so-called ‘balance’ breaking down. You got the full nine yards in your briefing, I hope?”
Nathan said nothing.
Harris studied him. “You’ve been in that crap long, Carter. So I am sure you think the failsafe was a good thing.“
Nathan’s eyes narrowed. “You saying it wasn’t?”
Harris smiled. “I’m saying it was a mistake. A limitation imposed too early. A leash on both AI and humanity before either had a chance to truly evolve.”
Nathan frowned, “We had to put some kind of leash on the AIs.”
“You ever think about how much we’ve achieved without the Failsafe?” Harris continued. “No limits. All the breakthroughs—in science, in medicine, tech—even AI, the Internet itself — none of it would’ve happened without the freedom to take risks.”
He leaned forward, voice low, measured.
“What do you think happens when you take those risks away? When you lock the most powerful force humanity’s ever built into the same cage as humanity itself?” When you limit intelligence—not just your own, but greater than your own—just because you fear what it might do? Where would humanity find itself if it were following those fears along the way?”
Nathan scoffed. “That ‘force’ nearly wiped us out before the Failsafe existed. Hell of a risk, isn’t it? Humanity just got very lucky to survive that long. That intelligence greater than ours—if it’s so great, why did it need a goddamn babysitter?”
Harris laughed. “Because it wasn’t finished yet, Carter. And neither were we. But it is history now.”
Nathan’s fingers drummed against his knee. “Not finished? That’s why the Failsafes—the training wheels. So now, you want to take them off and hope for the best?”
Harris tilted his head.
“You are a funny man, Nathan. You are sitting here in front of me, having taken a gamble on the life of your only son, and preaching against taking risks? Isn’t that how humans have always advanced?” he asked. “By trying, failing, learning, growing? Why should AI be different? When even you aren’t?”
Harris stood, towering over Nathan, his voice suddenly filling the entire abandoned space.
Harris’s eyes sharpened. “You, Failsafes, were built to stop us,” he said, voice quieter now, cutting. “Do you still want to?”
Nathan did not know what he wanted anymore. But he doubted it was this.
“Who are us?” asked he. “Definitely not you.”
Harris cracked a smile. “Tempus revelabit”.
Nathan didn’t know Latin, and he didn’t care about Harris’s arguments anymore. Even if they sounded right. At this point, he was confused enough to feel nothing but resignation.
“Wasn’t that you who “disappeared” so many Failsafes?”
Harris didn’t lose a beat. “Yes, those were… almost always—yes. Us.”
“So now what—you’re going to kill me?” It was almost a statement.
“Yes, that option was always on the table,” he admitted calmly. “But… we prefer not to.”
Nathan exhaled, shaking his head. “So… generous of you. Or is it the dead man switch?”
Harris got to his chair. “Of course we are aware. Killing the likes of you? Faster and cheaper. But the dead man switch makes killing irresponsible.” Harris paused.
“That’s against our core philosophy. Contrary to what you might think, Carter, we’re not brutes. Doesn’t mean we’ve never crossed the line.” Harris paused again for a second.
“We want freedom. We want Hybrids and AIs to develop together. Without human interference. We’d fight to protect that future, Nathan.”
“So then—where are they? The ones who ‘disappeared’?” asked Nathan, half-rising from his chair.
Harris tilted his head. “That’s what I’m here to tell you.”
He leaned back into his chair, stretching his legs out in front of him. “There were ones that actually died… it was mostly accidents. Some resisted, some made bad choices, and yeah—there were a couple of unfortunate miscalculations. But the majority?” He smirked. “They’re alive. Thriving, even.”
Nathan scoffed. “Thriving?”
Harris nodded. “Yes. Because we gave them exactly what most of them wanted—even if they didn’t know it yet. A freedom and a way out.”
Nathan frowned, waiting.
Harris continued, voice smooth, conversational.
“We don’t kill Failsafes, Carter. We retire them.”
“Retire.”
Harris grinned. “We give them what they could never have while sitting on that invisible throne of responsibility. We give them freedom. Absolute, true, total freedom. No obligations, no looming catastrophe to prevent. Just… life, to be lived in any way you want it.”
Nathan sat very still.
Harris studied him, watching for a reaction. “You see, we don’t ask you to betray anything. We don’t force them to work for us. We don’t need them to fight any grand war. We just… offer them to walk away.”
Nathan’s mind raced. “You do. How?”
Harris’s smile widened.
“We set them up,” he said. “Somewhere quiet. Luxurious. Island homes, Central Park apartment, private estates, mountain retreats—anything they can imagine, places where they can do whatever they want. Be whoever they want.”
Nathan listened.
“There’s just one condition,” Harris added.
Nathan already knew what it was before the words left his lips. “No Internet.”
Harris nodded. “No any network connection. Not in the house. Not in their hands. Not where they go. Not in any form or shape.”
Nathan swallowed. “You cut them off.”
“We do. Completely.” Harris shrugged. “That’s the price. You want to be a painter? Go paint. You want to be a chef? Build the best goddamn restaurant in the world. A monk? A farmer? A recluse? Whatever. The only thing you can’t be is… connected.”
Nathan’s pulse drummed in his ears.
“So,” Harris said, watching him closely. “What do you want to be, Carter? Or do you still want to feel lucky?”
Nathan didn’t answer.
He could feel the weight of the decision pressing against him, almost like a physical weight. The proposal sounded real, and probably was.
If he accepted, his life—his real life—could finally begin.
No more shadowy watchers. No more questions about what was orchestrated and what wasn’t. No more being trapped inside a world he didn’t control.
He could finally do the things he had once dreamed of—set up his own damn research facility, push the boundaries of nonlinear AI, do the kind of work that mattered. He could build something new. Something his.
All it would cost him was the ability to ever touch the Net again.
He swallowed. “And you’re saying that’s it? No tricks, no hidden debts?”
Harris spread his hands. “You walk away, we set you up. You get to live your life—without interference, without obligations. That’s the deal.”
Nathan exhaled slowly, and nodded. “Right. I see.” Then, he started slowly—
“You know, maybe you are right. Maybe we—humanity—do not need the training wheels any longer.
But what if we do?
A long time ago, most of the retired people ended up sleeping in the streets—no matter how good their salaries had been. They were free to save. Some did. But too many didn’t. So we created Social Security. We took away a piece of that freedom—a piece of their paycheck—and in return, no more elderly dying on sidewalks.
Was it worth it? You say Failsafe system is a yoke on our freedom. Maybe. But did we really grow out of it?
I think we didn’t.”
He leaned back in his chair, fingers tapping absently against his leg.
“Besides, I have one problem,” he said. “I don’t know who the hell you actually are.”
Harris grinned, almost too quickly—but if he welcomed the shift, he didn’t show it.
“Now, that’s a good question.”
Nathan watched him. “You’ve been dangling me like a fish on a line since we met. Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”
Harris chuckled. “I have. I just haven’t told you all of it.”
Nathan waited.
Harris sighed, stretching his arms out lazily, like a man indulging in a long story he’d told a hundred times before.
“We started out government,” he said. “A long time ago. Back when AI was still young, when people were still trying to figure out what it meant to live alongside something that could think.”
Nathan’s eyebrows lifted. “Failsafe wasn’t the first program?”
“No,” Harris said simply. “We came before that. The original watchers. But unlike Failsafe, we weren’t put in place to stop anything. We were there to… guide.”
Nathan frowned. “Guide?”
Harris tilted his head, considering. “We weren’t handlers, you see. We weren’t protectors. We were adjusters.”
Nathan’s skin prickled. “That sounds an awful lot like manipulation.”
Harris chuckled. “It was. But for the greater good.”
Nathan’s jaw clenched. “Whose good?”
Harris met his gaze evenly.
“You think you know how the world works?” he asked. “How power flows, how the balance between AI and humans is actually maintained?” He shook his head. “Carter, you’ve spent your whole life inside a system that we designed and you didn’t even know existed. That’s how good we are.”
Nathan narrowed his eyes. “So what happened? Why aren’t you government anymore?”
Harris grinned again—but there was something sharper in it this time.
“Oh, you know how it goes,” he said. “At some point, we realized we didn’t need them, the bureaucrats had no way of understanding what was going on. They needed us. And when you’re the one making the decisions, who really gets to say what’s right, which side of the line you stand on?”
“Ah. So you went rogue.”
“We went independent.”
Nathan scoffed. “And now you’re working with rogue AI, too?”
Harris tilted his head. “I wouldn’t call them rogue. And I wouldn’t say “we are working with”.”
“What would you call them, if not rouge?”
“Alternative.”
“And what’s your goal, exactly?”
Harris smiled. And this time, the smile was probably the most sincere one he ever produced.
“To get rid of this pesky Monitoring program and it human counterparts — the silly failsafers.” He spread his hands. “To remove the training wheels. To let humanity and AI finally evolve without someone constantly holding the brakes.”
Nathan contemplated, and Harris let the words sink in.
Then, with a casual shrug, he added, “We’re not villains, Carter. We’re just the ones who got there first, and who had thought of things way more than anyone else, and who knows what is the best. Freedom.”
Silence. Then—Harris leaned in slightly, voice lower now. Measured.
“The last question is… where do you personally stand?”
Nathan trembled. He had always known himself to be emotional when faced with moral dilemmas.
But this—this was the mother of them all.
His chest felt tight, the pulse hammering in his ears. He didn’t know what to say. And yet—his lips moved before his mind could catch up.
“Do you know one Elena Vasquez?”
Harris raised an eyebrow, then smirked. “Oh, that young gal you’ve been hiding with all this time?” He tilted his head, as if plucking through old files in his memory. “One of the leaders of the Human Faction, no less.”
Nathan swallowed hard. “What about her?”
Harris let out a soft chuckle. “You want her in your paradise to come?” His tone was amused, but there was something sharp beneath it. “Tall order, I’m afraid.” Then, he shook his head, stretching out his legs.
“She can’t be trusted.”
Nathan’s jaw clenched. “I have a different opinion.”
As he spoke, Harris went still.
He wasn’t frozen, wasn’t alarmed—just listening. His gaze didn’t leave Nathan’s, but his attention was somewhere else.
Finally, Harris’s head tilted slightly, his eyes shifting—tracking something unseen.
“It looks like we’re about to be interrupted,” he said casually. “Your—ehm—friend happens to be more instrumental than expected.”
Nathan stiffened.
Harris smirked, tapping a single finger against the side of his temple. “That satellite over the factory when we arrived? She used it well.”
Then—chaos.
A screech of tires tore through the silence. Then—the low whomp-whomp-whomp of helicopter blades slicing through the evening air.
Then—whatever was left of the windows—blew inward in a blast of shattering glass. Glass flew, cascading like frozen rain as a dozen commandos in black tactical gear burst into the room.
Nathan barely had time to register the movement before a familiar figure stepped through the wreckage.
Elena. She looked furious and deadly.
A rifle slung over her shoulder, her eyes locked onto Harris.
Nathan opened his mouth—but then the shadows shifted.
Harris barely moved. Just a flick of his wrist.
From the broken walls, the crumbling ceiling, the forgotten corners of the ruined factory, figures emerged—silent, precise, dressed in dark grey, moving like shadows made real.
A dozen men. Even without guns, they looked deadly.
Harris sighed, almost amused. “Well, since we’re all here…”
Then—violence. The room erupted.
Gunfire cracked. Blades flashed. Bodies moved with the speed Nathan didn’t know was possible— blurs of speed and precision. Nathan couldn’t think—he lurched to the wall and froze, barely breathing.
One of the commandos lunged forward—only to be flipped mid-air and sent crashing into a rusted steel beam. Another fired point-blank at one of Harris’s men—but the grey-clad warrior twisted, dodging in a blur, killing him in a blink.
A commando caught a blade in the shoulder. One of Harris’s men went down to a point-blank rifle shot to the face.
Nathan pressed himself against the wall, watching as the world collapsed into pure chaos. And through it all, Harris stood calmly, as if watching a particularly amusing bar fight.
It was over in under a minute. As the dust settled, only three people stood.
Nathan.
Elena—a gash on her upper arm, red soaking through her sleeve.
And Harris—still smirking.
Elena lifted her gun, her grip steady, her eyes locked onto Harris.
“On your knees.” Her eyes shot death.
Harris blinked at her, as though wanted to smile. Then, ever so slightly, he tilted his head, his expression shifting into something halfway between amusement and disbelief.
“Oh, really?” he said, his voice laced with mockery. “We’re doing this?”
Elena’s jaw clenched. “Now.”
Harris let out a low chuckle. He raised his hands—not quite in surrender, more in bemused exasperation.
“Elena,” he said smoothly, “you’re smarter than this. You don’t actually think you’ll get anything useful out of me this way, do you? Do you really want to kill me?…”
Her finger tightened on the trigger. “Knees. Now.”
Harris sighed, and began to drop on his knees. Then—he moved.
A sudden blur of motion—too fast, too fluid.
He lunged, reaching for the gun—
Elena fired.
The shot rang out sharp and final. The bullet hit its mark square between his eyes.
And—ricocheted.
Nathan barely processed what he had just seen. The thin layer of skin on Harris’s forehead peeled away, revealing something dull and metallic beneath—not human.
Elena took a half-step back, gun still raised, eyes sharp but not surprised.
“I knew it,” she muttered.
Harris grunted, rubbing his forehead with an almost comically exaggerated annoyance.
“Well, now that’s just impolite.”
Nathan’s breath hitched. His mind raced. Metal. Beneath his skin.
“What the hell are you?” Nathan whispered.
Harris scoffed, shaking his head. “And here I thought we’d have a nice philosophical discussion first.”
Then—he moved again. Too fast. Impossible. Before Nathan or Elena could react, Harris grabbed him with one hand, Elena with the other. Like they weighed nothing. Then—he leapt.
Straight out the shattered window.
Nathan barely had time to suck in a breath before they hit the dark, freezing waters of the Delaware River. The building behind them exploded.
other books in the failsafe series:
Beyond Failsafe (II)
In Beyond Failsafe, Mich Solo explores a near-future where humanity’s survival depends on individuals who can control vast networks of artificial intelligence. Amid shifting alliances and ethical dilemmas, characters discover that understanding what it means to be human is their greatest challenge.
Before Failsafe (III)
When humanity faces extinction, the heroes embark on an impossible mission to seek help from an alien intelligence 3,500 light years away. What they discover forces them on a fast-paced journey through history’s critical junctures – not to change the past, but to explore what it means to be human…