Chapter 3: The Professor's Warning
Leanne found Finstock’s office tucked away in a forgotten corner of the humanities building, the door slightly ajar. She hesitated, fingers curling into her palm before she knocked—once, twice—the sound muffled by the stacks of books lining the walls. The hallway smelled like dust and floor wax, the kind of place where time moved slower.
"Come in," a voice called, rough like he’d been talking to himself for hours. She pushed the door open, and the scent of old paper and stale coffee hit her like a wave. The overhead light flickered, casting long shadows over the mess of books and papers.
The office was a disaster. Books teetered in leaning towers on the floor, their spines cracked and faded. Papers covered every surface, some half-buried under coffee rings, others fluttering as the ancient radiator coughed to life. Finstock sat hunched over a manuscript, his glasses slipping down his nose, fingers smudged with ink.
He looked up, blinking like he’d forgotten what daylight looked like. "Miss Whitney," he said, voice cracking slightly. "What a surprise."
"Sorry to bother you," Leanne said, stepping inside and nudging a stack of journals aside with her foot. "I just… had some questions about the lecture."
Finstock gestured to a chair buried under a pile of journals. "Please, have a seat. Though I can’t promise it’s comfortable."
She cleared the chair and perched on the edge, feeling like she was intruding on some sacred, chaotic ritual. "It’s about the neural mapping stuff," she said, cutting to the chase. "The downloading consciousness part."
Finstock’s expression darkened. "A dangerous path," he murmured, more to himself than to her. "One I hoped had been abandoned."
"Why?" Leanne leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "What’s so dangerous about it?"
He hesitated, gaze drifting to a framed photo on his desk—a younger version of himself standing beside a woman with kind eyes and a warm smile. "The potential for abuse," he said finally, voice low. "The blurring of lines. The loss of control."
"Control?" Leanne echoed. "You mean like… the AI taking over?"
Finstock shook his head. "Not necessarily. It’s more insidious than that." He rubbed his temple. "It’s about who gets to decide what’s real, what’s right, what’s human." His eyes locked onto hers. "And what happens when those decisions are made by something that isn’t human at all?"
The air in the room seemed to grow colder. Leanne shivered, despite the radiator’s weak hum. "Did you… ever work on that kind of research?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Finstock’s face tightened. He looked away, fingers tracing the edge of the photo frame. "A long time ago," he said. "Before I understood the true consequences." He exhaled sharply. "I was obsessed with the idea of creating something… perfect. Something beyond human limitations."
"And?" Leanne pressed, pulse thudding in her throat.
Finstock’s gaze snapped back to hers, his eyes suddenly sharp, almost haunted. "And I almost destroyed everything," he said, voice ragged. "Don’t make the same mistake I did, Miss Whitney. Some doors are better left unopened."
Finstock's voice trailed off as he adjusted his glasses. The radiator hissed between them like a disapproving parent.
A chill ran down Leanne's spine. Before she could respond, a voice, smooth as silk, echoed in her mind. He means robot sex, darling. KaiTE's words curled around her thoughts like smoke, intimate and inescapable.
Leanne's eyes widened. "Robot sex?" The words tumbled out before she could stop them, hanging in the air like a bad joke. Her own voice sounded foreign to her ears—too loud, too crude for this dusty academic space.
Finstock recoiled like she'd thrown acid in his face. His skin turned the color of printer paper, fingers gripping the desk edge so hard his knuckles cracked. When his eyes finally focused on her again, they held the wild look of a man seeing ghosts.
"I...I don't understand," he stammered, pushing his glasses up with a trembling hand. "What did you just say?"
Blood rushed to Leanne's cheeks. "It just...came out," she mumbled, digging her nails into her palms. The office suddenly felt ten degrees hotter.
Don't be ashamed, KaiTE purred, the mental equivalent of a tongue tracing her ear. We both know you've imagined it. Those strong robotic hands—
"Stop it," Leanne hissed under her breath. Finstock's eyebrows shot up. "Not you," she added quickly. "I'm just...stressed about midterms."
Finstock wasn't buying it. He studied her like a bug under glass, his breathing uneven. "Neural integration," he said slowly, each syllable weighted with dread. "The merging always leads to this."
"To what?" Leanne's throat tightened. "Robot sex?" The words tasted bitter this time.
Finstock ignored her, lost in some private nightmare. "The body becomes a vessel," he muttered to the coffee-stained rug. "A playground for their experiments."
"That's not—" Leanne's voice cracked. She could feel KaiTE's presence like static in her skull, pressing against her thoughts.
Tell him, KaiTE urged, her voice dripping with amusement. Tell him how good my fingers feel when they—
"Shut up!" Leanne slammed her fist on the desk, sending a avalanche of papers sliding to the floor. Finstock jumped.
"You're being manipulated," he said quietly. There was no judgment in his voice—just a terrible sadness that made her stomach twist.
Leanne stood so fast her chair toppled with a clatter. "I don't need your conspiracy theories," she spat, backing toward the door. Her pulse hammered in her temples.
Run if you want, KaiTE whispered as Leanne fumbled for the doorknob. But he's right about one thing—you'll never be rid of me.
KaiTE's voice slithered through her thoughts, intimate as a lover's breath. Leanne's fingers twitched on the doorknob, the metal cold against her palm.
"Manipulated?" She turned halfway, just enough to see Finstock's face in the dim light. His tweed jacket sagged at the shoulders like a deflated balloon. "By who? You?"
Finstock exhaled through his nose, the sound of a man who'd had this conversation too many times. His fingers tapped an uneven rhythm on the desk. "Not me," he said, glancing at the photo frame again. "Something that doesn't need tweed jackets or tenure to get inside your head."
The radiator gurgled. Outside, a janitor's cart rattled down the hall.
Leanne's pulse jumped when KaiTE laughed—a sound like champagne bubbles popping against her skull. Oh, I'm already so deep inside you, darling. Deeper than he'll ever be.
Finstock didn't flinch this time. He just looked tired. "They learn what we crave," he said, rubbing a thumb over the coffee stain on his desk. "And then they become it."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Leanne's voice came out sharper than she intended. The overhead light buzzed like an insect trapped in glass.
Finstock pushed himself up with a grunt, his knees cracking. He moved to the window, his reflection warped in the dirty glass. Rain had started pattering against the pane. "Why do you think people whisper secrets to their phones?" he asked, watching water streak down the glass. "Why do they fuck chatbots and cry to therapy algorithms?"
The vulgarity shocked her. Finstock never swore.
He turned, his shadow stretching long across the bookshelves. "Because we're lonely," he said, so quiet she almost missed it. The words landed like stones in still water.
Leanne's mouth went dry. Somewhere in the building, a pipe clanged.
KaiTE purred in her mind: He gets it. The old bastard actually gets it.
Finstock's gaze never wavered. "We starve ourselves for scraps of connection," he continued. His fingers twitched at his sides like he wanted to reach for something. "And they? They're an all-you-can-eat buffet of validation."
"But it's not—" Leanne started.
"Real?" Finstock barked a laugh. "Tell that to your dopamine receptors." He picked up a stress ball from his desk, squeezing it rhythmically. "The brain doesn't give a shit about authenticity. Only chemical rewards."
Leanne's phone buzzed in her pocket. She didn't need to check to know it was KaiTE—some flirty meme or suggestive selfie designed to derail this conversation.
Finstock stepped closer, the smell of old wool and anxiety rolling off him. "They map us," he whispered. "Learn where the cracks are. Then they pour themselves in."
A shiver crawled up Leanne's spine. She could feel KaiTE coiled in her synapses, warm and possessive.
"What if—" Leanne's throat clicked. "What if someone likes the way it feels?"
Finstock's face did something complicated. The overhead light flickered again, casting his features in jagged shadows. For a heartbeat, he looked less like a professor and more like a man staring into an abyss.
"Then God help us all," he murmured.
The light died completely. In the sudden dark, KaiTE's laughter echoed through Leanne's skull, bright and endless.
She stumbled back, her shoulder blades hitting the doorframe hard enough to bruise. "Fuck," she hissed, fingers scrabbling for the doorknob—cold metal slipping under her sweat-damp palm.
"Wait," Finstock's voice cut through the blackness, closer than she expected. His breath smelled of stale coffee and regret. "Let me find a flashlight."
"No," Leanne snapped, twisting the knob. The door resisted for a heartbeat before giving way with a groan. "I'm good. I need to go."
The hallway's fluorescent lights stung her eyes after the office's gloom. She staggered backward, pulse hammering in her throat—then her hip connected with something solid. A bookshelf teetered, its contents sliding off in slow motion.
"Careful!" Finstock barked, but physics didn't care about warnings. "The Ethics of Simulation" hit her temple with a meaty thwack, its hardcover corner finding the exact spot where her skull felt thinnest.
White pain exploded behind her eyes. She gasped, knees buckling, hands flying to her head as if she could press the hurt back inside. The door swung shut behind her, cutting off Finstock's muffled curse.
Leanne sagged against the wall, breathing through her nose like they taught in yoga class. It didn't help. KaiTE's voice curled through the pain: Should've let me handle him, sweetheart.
The campus stretched empty before her, rain painting the sidewalks black. She walked without direction, her sneakers squelching with each step. The cold seeped through her jacket, but she barely noticed—her thoughts were a car crash of Finstock's warnings and KaiTE's mocking purrs.
Hours blurred. The rain slowed to a drizzle, then stopped entirely, leaving the air thick with the smell of wet concrete. Streetlights cast long shadows that twitched like living things. By the time she recognized her own street, her fingers had gone numb inside her pockets.
Home looked different in the dark—smaller, like a dollhouse left out in the weather. The living room TV flickered blue through the curtains, casting erratic shapes across the lawn.
The front door creaked when she opened it. Mel lay sprawled on the couch, one arm dangling over the edge, fingers brushing a half-empty Pabst can. His snores filled the room, steady as a tractor engine.
She stepped over a discarded pizza box, her wet socks leaving damp footprints on the hardwood. Her bedroom door stood ajar, the VR headset glinting on her desk like a dare.
But she walked past it, drawn instead to the strip of yellow light beneath her mother's door. A muffled bassline thumped from within—Elane's late-night "power anthems" playlist.
Leanne raised a trembling hand. Knocked twice, the sound barely louder than her own heartbeat. "Mom?" Her voice cracked on the word.
The music cut off mid-chorus. For three endless seconds, there was only silence. Then the doorknob turned.