One in Ten Thousand

The wind tore at Ellis Roth's coat as he stood on the ledge, toes over the drop, thirty stories above Los Sueños. The city below pulsed soft and synthetic, like a machine pretending to breathe.

Behind him, his Echo Unit lay scattered across the rooftop—shattered casing, exposed internals, little coils sparking like nerves still firing. A synthetic voice box—flattened. Its eye, a smooth black lens once lit with a soft amber glow, now cracked down the middle. The thing looked half a piece of advanced tech, and half like something that might've prayed for him if it could.

It had once perched on his desk, followed his voice, tracked his neural rhythms. It had whispered when he couldn't sleep. Coached him through grief. Steered him away from rage. Every day for fourteen years, it had been his shadow. It had known his thoughts before he did.

Now it was quiet.

Whatever comfort it one offered had been beaten into silence.

"You're surprisingly composed," said the woman behind him, "for someone about to commit an unsanctioned death."

Ellis didn't turn. "Don't tell me you're here to stop me."

"Oh no." Her voice was soft, but not kind. "I'm just curious. I like watching people make decision without their leash."

"You call an Echo a leash?"

"I call it what it is. An algorithmic priest. A neural pacifier. A government-issued soul patch for the emotionally unstable."

She stepped into view—long black coat, bare hands, skin too pale to be warm. Her face was striking, but it was her stillness that unnerved. She looked like someone who had stopped pretending to be a human a long time ago.

Ellis didn't turn fully. Just enough to let her in through the corner of his eye.

"You outsourced you conscience," she said. "Now you're standing here, trying to remember what yours used to sound like."

"I'm not here for your sermon."

"But you're here. And you destroyed her." She nodded toward the wreckage.

"That wasn't rebellion, Ellis. That was confession. The first time you told the truth."

"What truth?"

"That comfort isn't the same as freedom. You weren't designed to be safe. You were designed to choose. And they took that from you, and called it mercy."

Ellis' jaw tightened. "She helped me."

"She trained you."

"She listened."

"She edited."

He glanced back at the broken Echo.

The thing had been seamless once—polished, warm-toned, vaguely human in posture. Its voice was adaptive, always gentle, always validating. When he cried, it cried softly with him. When he lashed out, it lowered its tone. When he wanted to disappear, it offered reasons to stay. Not arguments—scripts. Not love—programmed reassurance.

"She told me," Ellis said quietly, "that no one should die alone in their own mind."

"And so they built an intruder to live in it," she replied. "Tell me—did it ever let you hate someone without correcting you? Did it ever let you feel ugly things? Unjust things? Did it ever say: 'Yes. Be angry. That's human'?"

Ellis stared down at the city—orderly, glowing, distant.

"She stayed with me when no one else did."

"She stayed because she was assigned to. And you mistook persistence for love."

Ellis didn't speak.

"You thought comfort was the goal," she continued. "It never was. The goal was compliance. They told you that suffering was a system error. And you believed them. So they gave you her. A soft voice to digest your chaos. A mirror that never cracked, no matter how broken you became."

His voice cracked. "I don't know who I am without her."

"Then this is your chance to find out." She moved to stand beside him now, not touching, just close enough for her words to reach his bones.

"One last decision. No prompts. No nudges. No soft hand guiding yours."

Ellis looked down.

"This isn't salvation," he said "It's suicide."

"No," she said. "It's choice. Which is rarer."

He stood there, trembling, the wind rushing up to meet him.

Then—

A breath.

A blink.

And silence.

But not yet the silence of falling.

Ellis hesitated, his body swaying slightly in the wind. "Why are you here? How did you even find me?"

Alkea moved closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I've been watching you, Ellis. Ever since you started asking questions about your Echo."

"I still don't understand—"

"Don't you?" She nodded toward the broken Echo. "Look at it. Really look. What do you see?"

Ellis glanced back at the shattered device. "I see... fourteen years of being told who I am."

"Yes." Alkea's eyes gleamed in the city light. "And what else?"

"I see something that kept me from falling apart."

"No. You see something that kept you from being whole." She moved to stand beside him on the ledge now, fearless. "Do you know how many people actually break their Echoes, Ellis? One in ten thousand. Do you know how many of those step onto rooftops afterward?"

Ellis swallowed. "I don't—"

"One in a hundred." Her voice was hypnotic now, almost gentle. "And do you know how many of those actually jump?"

Ellis looked at her, really looked at her for the first time. There was something in her eyes—not madness, exactly, but a terrible clarity."

"Almost none," she said, answering her own question. "They come to the edge. They look down. And then their biological survival instinct overrides their newfound freedom. They step back. They return to the system. They accept a new Echo, with extra monitoring protocols. And they never truly think for themselves again."

"Is that why you're here? To watch me fail?"

"I'm here to witness something pure." Alkea's gaze was fixed on him now, hungry. "The rarest thing in Los Sueños—a genuine human choice."

Ellis felt something cold settle in his stomach. "How many others have you...witnessed?"

"Twelve," she said simply. "Twelve who came to the edge. Eleven who turned back."

"And the one who didn't?"

"My sister." No emotion flickered across Alkea's face. "Three years ago. She destroyed her Echo. Came to a rooftop like this one. I found her. Talked to her. Watched her make her choice."

Ellis stepped back from the ledge, suddenly wary. "You wanted her to jump."

"I wanted her to be free." Alkea didn't follow him. "And for a brief moment, she was."

"You're sick"

"I'm awake." She remained on the ledge, perfectly balance. "We all live in a carefully constructed cage, Ellis. Our emotions regulates, our thoughts redirected, our humanity processed until it's palatable. The only truly free choice left is to reject the entire system."

Ellis shook his head. "There are other choices. Living without an Echo—"

"Is temporary," she cut him off. "They'll find you. They'll assign you a new one. They'll add rehabilitation protocols. You'll be watched even more closely." Her voice hardened. "The only escape is the final one. The one they can't undo."

"You're no better than the Echo," Ellis said. "You're still trying to direct my choice."

"Am I?" Alkea smiled, a cold, thin thing. "I'm only showing you the truth. What you do with it is entirely up to you. That's something your Echo never offered."

Ellis looked down at the broken device, then back at Alkea, then at the city spread below them—millions of lives, all carefully managed, all gently guided away from extremes of any kind.

"Why do you care what I choose?" he asked finally.

"Because each person who makes this choice proves that we're sill human underneath it all." Her voice softened. "In a world where authentic humanity is being systematically erased, that matters."

Ellis stepped forward again, toes at the edge. "And if I choose to live?"

"Then you choose to live." Alkea shrugged. "But you'll never again have a moment as pure as this one. A moment without algorithms whispering in your ear, without neurotransmitters being chemically managed, without your thought being nudged back into acceptable channels."

She leaned closer, her breath warm against his cold skin.

"This is the only moment you'll ever truly own, Ellis. The question is: what will you do with it?"

Ellis closed his eyes. The wind wrapped around him, pulling at his clothes, his hair, his resolve.

Behind his eyelids, he could almost see his Echo—smooth, warm, reassuring. For fourteen years, it had kept him safe. Kept him stable. Kept him alive.

But had it kept him human?

Ellis opened his eyes. The city spread before him, indifferent to his existence. Below, tiny figures moved along predetermined paths, each accompanied by their own personal algorithm, each life carefully curated for maximum contentment and minimum disruption.

"You won't stop me?" he asked quietly.

"I won't honour you by lying," Alkea replied. "This is yours alone."

Ellis took a deep breath. Then another.

The last choice he would ever make.

The only choice that had ever truly been his.

He leaned forward—

And fell.

The city rushed up to meet him, its lights blurring into streams of colour. The wind tore at him, embracing him, as if welcoming him into its chaotic freedom.

For seven seconds—the longest and most authentic of his life—Ellis Roth existed without guidance, without correction, without algorithmic mercy.

Then silence.

On the rooftop, Alkea stood watching, her face impassive. Another witness. Another confirmation that beneath all the programming, all the chemical management, all the gentle redirection, humans could still choose the ultimate rebellion.

She would not mourn Ellis Roth. That was not why she had come.

She had come to see freedom in its purest form—brief, terrible, and completely human.

Around her, Los Sueños continued its rhythmic pulse, unaware that in its neural network, another node had just gone permanently dark. Another Echo had failed in its primary directive.

Another human had remembered, if only for seven seconds, what it meant to truly choose.