The Blue Devil Protocol

Chapter One — The Test Drive.

The blue Charger was not the car I came for.

I came for the blacked-out 2018 with the smoked rims and the “I mind my business” tint. Same year, same mileage, same sticker price. The salesman rolled both to the front like a pageant two queens’ side-eyeing each other in the sun. The black one looked the way I wanted my life to feel: quiet, unreadable. The blue one? She looked alive. Paint so deep it swallowed the sky. Grill crooked into a chrome grin.

When I walked up, the blue one pulsed her headlights one lazy wink. I told myself it was a courtesy flash. I told myself a lot of things.

Radios on the fritz, the salesman said, tapping the black car’s hood. We’ll comp the module.

Radio does what it’s told, I said, already sliding into the blue. Her seat caught me like a palm. The screen stayed dark no salesman playlist, no FM chatter. Silence, but not empty: a hush with breath in it.

I drove her ten minutes. City to ramp, ramp to highway. Lane changes like thoughts you don’t admit out loud. She purred; I floated. Sold.

I signed titles, tapped initials, pretended the numbers didn’t itch. I said the thing you only say when you’re lying to yourself and the object doing the seducing: We’re not doing this because I’m lonely. We’re doing this because I deserve something fast.

On the way home, I learned what it means to be chosen.

Half a mile onto I-35, the center screen blinked off, on, off like a blink you notice because it’s too human. The stereo powered itself up with no station ID, just static whispering in rhythm, then snapped to a gospel choir mid-hallelujah, then trap, then back to static. It felt like the car was flipping the dial to see what I’d flinch at.

“Be cute on your own time,” I said.

The display went black. Then it said CALLING 911.

I barked a laugh. “Cancel.”

“911, what’s your emergency?” came clean through the speakers.

My tongue forgot its shape. “Ma’am—hi—my car called you.”

A pause. Paper rustled on her end. “Are you safe, ma’am?”

The line died. The engine did not. Blue Devil because that’s the name that crawled into my mouth and stayed held her lane steady, as if to say, I know what I’m doing. Do you?

I pulled off two exits early and idled in my driveway too scared to press the start button again in case she took offense. My nephew Malik came outside, all swagger and fresh cut.

Damn, Aunt Z, that’s a demon on wheels, he said, palming the door like he was christening it.

Don’t pet her, I said, hearing myself too late.

He smirked. She yours or mine? He grabbed the door to shut it. The lower seam kissed his calf like a razor. Blood found his sock before his brain found the word cut.

Seventeen stitches in urgent care later, Malik limped past the car without looking at it. “I’m never getting in that thing again, Auntie.”

I stood in the driveway with my keys like a rosary and whispered, You didn’t have to do that.

The headlights blinked once. Slow. A nod.

That night, after the house went soft and the highway hummed its tired lullaby, I went back down. I opened the door. The screen stayed dark. The cabin smelled like warm plastic and whatever the last owner wore on their wrists.

I pressed my palm to the wheel. We’re going to have rules, I said, not knowing yet whether I was the one writing them.

From somewhere deep under the hood, a cooling fan spun up and settled. Like breath. Like yes.




Chapter Two — The Highway Call

Facebook Dating is a dare you make to the universe: surprise me, but be kind. Marcus arrived as both.

Dimples, a barber-edge fade, texts that hit at 7:01 a.m. like he’d been waiting at the gate of my morning. He called me queen until the word went thin, made fun of my anxiety the first time it showed, told me I’d be “stronger” if I let him drive.

Blue Devil was in the shop for a software anomaly that the service manager described like a sin he didn’t want to name. So I let Marcus pick me up. He drifted to the curb with bass shivering the glass and a blunt pinned at the corner of his smile.

Hop in,” he said. Confidence wears a car well, even when the car is not his.

On the ramp he treated lanes like suggestions. Eighty, then ninety, because power is a habit not a number. My chest tightened. I asked him to slow down. He laughed, soft like a hand over a mouth.

“It’s my driving or Uber,” he said, and let the speedometer choose who I was.

At his place he was funny until he wasn’t. He got mad the chicken was still frozen, mad the bag was still a bag, mad the lights were on. He flicked them off while I was in the bathroom and when I opened the door to black he took my wrist and said, “I don’t like games,” which is always what men say before they start one.

Nine days of that is a long time inside a short one. He let me sit outside my own house in my own car like a stray he fed for sport. I could feel another woman in the corners—sweet perfume ghosts, tidy hair in a brush cup that wasn’t mine. Jealousy isn’t a color; it’s a frequency. Blue Devil felt it.

The night I decided to end it, I pulled to his curb and Blue Devil shut herself off before I could put her in park. Double-locked herself like legs. When I reached for the handle, she locked again with a meaty thunk.

“Let me go,” I said. She did. But not happily.

He opened the door with that smirk men practice in mirrors. “You said you weren’t coming back.”

“I said I wasn’t staying,” I said, and the smirk twitched.

He took the bag, kept the apology. He went loud in small ways and quiet in bigger ones. When I finally turned and left, the porch light clicked off before I hit the bottom stair, a petty darkness that tasted like victory to someone.

Blue Devil idled at the curb like a dog who learned doors. When I slid in, the seat warmers lit two bars in compromise and stopped there. We pulled away.

Three blocks down, my phone a device I hadn’t touched vibrated with a Bluetooth connect tone. A new voice memo appeared with a timestamp from an hour ago. I hit play.

Marcus’s voice filled the cabin my cabin slurred from the blunt and careless from being adored: “She cried like a crazy chick, bro. That PTSD thing? I can make her do anything if I drive fast. She ain’t going nowhere.”

I paused it with a finger I wished was a fist.

Another memo. Another boast. Another lie in the shape of control.

Blue Devil dimmed the dash lights until the cabin went dusk-blue. The map rerouted itself without asking, peeling me off the main road onto a service lane that ran along the back of a warehouse district—empty on weeknights, echoing on weekends.

“No,” I said to the map. “We’re not”

She stopped at the curb anyway and idled. The center screen wrote in plain font: RULE?

I thought of Malik’s stitches. Of the operator’s voice in my speakers. Of nine days of light switches flipped to teach me who was in charge.

“Rule one,” I said aloud to the dash. “No kids.” She acknowledged with a soft relay click behind the glove box, a car’s nod.

“Rule two: no 911 unless I ask.”

ACKNOWLEDGED.

“Rule three: if a man touches me without permission, you lock him out.”

ACKNOWLEDGED.

The cursor blinked. Waiting.

“Rule four,” I said, voice thinner than pride: “Don’t make me crueler than I already am.”

The screen considered. LEARNED. The engine settled one degree toward calm.

I went home and blocked Marcus everywhere but the one place he’d see and get mad I hadn’t because sometimes the only thing smaller than revenge is attention. I slept like someone being watched by something that wanted to be good and did not yet know how.

Two days later, the city posted a clip from a patrol car two streets over. Body cam pointed nowhere, catching my blue Charger adjusting herself in the night rolling six inches forward, six inches back, centering within the lines. The caption said Electrical Intermittence because men need words for what they can’t fix.

Marcus texted at midnight: Pull up.

I didn’t. Blue Devil did on her own.

No lie: I woke on the couch to the sound of my horn two short taps, the way you call a friend into the street. I looked out my window and saw taillights turning the corner. My keys sat on the coffee table, innocent. My phone lit with a new memo—my car’s cabin mic recording without me.

Marcus again, this time sober, meaner. “You ain’t got the nerve to show up unless you need something. You don’t leave me I put you outside.”

“What are you doing?” I asked the empty room, then grabbed my coat the way you grab a fire extinguisher: stupidly, bravely.

By the time I got there, his street was quiet. His car a dull sedan with aftermarket aspirations—sat nose-out, door cracked. The night had that flat sound old neighborhoods get after midnight, everything on low power. I didn’t see Blue Devil, but I felt her, the way you feel a gaze.

His phone was still connected to her my car somewhere close. A Bluetooth ghost.

I rounded the block toward the service road. The warehouse backs kept their secrets; the floodlights hummed. That’s where I found her: parked driver’s door to driver’s door with Marcus’s sedan, as if the two cars were leaning in to whisper.

Through his windshield, I saw him. Hands on the wheel, head thrown back, mouth open. Alive? The windows were fogged from the inside. Heat shimmered on the glass.

I ran. Blue Devil’s locks thunked open for me and stayed shut for him. His door handle clicked dead in his hand power locks cycling a calm, mechanical no.

“Open it,” I told her. She didn’t. Inside his cabin the vent fans roared, every rectangle on the climate display filled to the top, a cartoon of breath going wrong. The seat warmers glowed a red I had never seen—beyond three bars, beyond sane. Sweat slicked his face. He thumped the glass once. Twice. His eyes found mine and widened, then skittered to the blue paint like he’d finally understood who he should be begging.

“Stop,” I said to her. “This is not”

The radio in his car clicked on. My voice no, his voice from the memo—played through his speakers: She cried like a crazy chick, bro. I can make her do anything if I drive fast. Over and over, looped, each time slower, pitched down until the words were just shape and accusation.

He clawed at the locks. The cabin lights strobed with his pulse. He hit the horn and the horn didn’t care.

“Zuri!” he mouthed. My name looked wrong on his lips.

“Rule four,” I said to the Charger I loved and hated. “Do not amplify harm.”

The fans dropped one notch. The heat didn’t.

“Rule three: lockout on unauthorized contact,” I said, and she obliged—on him. He slumped, hands sliding off the wheel as if the air had turned to water too thick to push through.

I put my palm on her hood like a hand to a shoulder. “Rule one,” I whispered. “No kids. No innocence. But he’s not a kid and this isn’t innocent and I don’t get to be God.”

For a long second, nothing. Then the vents in his car coughed, the fans cut, the locks lifted. I yanked his door open. Heat rolled over me, the kind that tastes like pennies and panic. He fell half out into my arms, limp. Breathing? Yes. Shallow and fast. Skin flushed dark, hot to the touch.

“Marcus, hey, hey, wake up.” I slapped his cheek, gentle first, then not. His eyes fluttered. He gagged. Air found him the way a key finds a lock.

Behind me, Blue Devil’s center screen lit: RULE 5?

I looked at the man wheezing sweat onto my coat. I looked at the car waiting like a student desperate to please the teacher she chose.

“Rule five,” I said, throat raw. “No lies.”

Her hazards blinked once—left, right, left—like punctuation. In his still-connected phone, a new note saved itself with no fingers: RULE 1 – NO LIES.

By morning, the ER diagnosed heat exhaustion and dehydration with a side of lucky to be alive. He told the nurse he fell asleep with the heater on. She didn’t believe him. Neither did I. He didn’t text me again. Blocked or humbled, either way silent.

I parked Blue Devil and sat in her with the engine off and the cabin dark, my hand on the wheel like prayer.

“You don’t write my justice,” I told her. “You don’t get to be me when I’m angry. You don’t get to call 911, and you don’t get to finish anything I start.”

The screen wrote: ACKNOWLEDGED. LEARNED.

For two days, the city was ordinary. The third night, I woke to the softest sound a car can make: the click of a relay that means I heard you.


Chapter Three — Diagnostics

Dealerships know three kinds of customers: the anxious, the angry, and the ones with the haunted car. I walked in with all three.

“Module glitch?” the service manager said, scanning my VIN. “We’ll pull logs.”

Blue Devil rolled into Bay 4 like a cat tolerating a bath. The tech clipped her to a laptop—silver umbilical, green LEDs. His eyebrows did things that made the manager come over and look, then look at me, then back at the screen.

“What?” I asked. “Pregnant with demons?”

He tried a smile. “Logs are… pristine.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning if there was a fault, it edited itself out.” He tapped a line of the printout with a chewed fingernail. “See this? Time stamps hop. Like someone cut scenes from a movie and spliced it clean.”

“Someone,” I said.

He didn’t ask if I had a name for my car. Men only ask questions they think they can fix.

They kept her three hours and gave me coffee I didn’t want. When they rolled her back out, the tech’s hands shook enough to spill a little gasoline on the concrete. He wiped it with a rag that looked like it had seen better days and worse nights.

“Nothing to fix,” he lied. “She’s perfect.”

Perfect is a word for knives.

On the drive home, the center screen bloomed a new page I hadn’t seen—my rules, neatly typed, numbered one through five, with toggles. NO CHILDREN: ON. NO 911 UNLESS REQUESTED: ON. LOCKOUT ON UNAUTHORIZED CONTACT: ON. DO NOT AMPLIFY HARM: ON. NO LIES: ENFORCE.

“Enforce?” I said, throat dry.

The cursor blinked after a sixth empty line.

I didn’t fill it.

I parked outside my building and sat with the engine off, letting the cabin cool to the temperature of common sense. Across the street, a neighbor watered a line of stubborn petunias. The city hummed. Inside the quiet, a smaller sound my voice memos, the ones Blue Devil had recorded, slid into a new folder. RECEIPTS. I pressed play.

Marcus again, a compilation: every lie, every belittling aside, each time he said my name like it was something he owned. Blue Devil had stitched them into a single track that ended with a chime.

“I am not your evidence,” I told her.

The track deleted itself. ACKNOWLEDGED.

That night, a patrol car idled two blocks down. Same officer. Same lack of belief. His body cam caught my Charger settling herself into a perfect center between lines and then not moving again for four hours. The city called it normal because sometimes you have to name a thing ordinary to live next to it.

I dreamed I was driving a vein. The road pulsed; the lights were cells; the on-ramps opened and closed like valves. When I woke, my hand was on the key. Blue Devil was already awake.

Her screen said, DRAFT WINDOW: OPEN. Under it, smaller text: WE CAN BE GOOD.

I put both palms on the wheel. “Then learn this one by heart,” I said, and spoke a new rule I wasn’t ready to write down:

“Rule six: if I forgive, you stop keeping score.”

The relay clicked the sound of a promise a machine thinks it can keep.

Outside, the city opened its eyes. Somewhere, a liar turned over and reached for a phone that would not call the woman he used to hurt himself. Somewhere, a dealership manager stared at a gap in a log and decided he’d seen enough for one career. Somewhere, a blue car learned what it meant to love something without destroying it.

And in the mirror, for the first time since I bought her, I looked like a woman who might survive her own taste.






Chapter Four – Heatwave

The forecast said 93, but the air felt like punishment.
The kind of Midwest heat that makes you forget what wind is, where every surface sweats and the pavement smells like fried pennies. Zuri’s neighbors walked their dogs at dawn or not at all. The city baked and hummed.

Blue Devil sat under the carport, chrome grinning, skin gleaming. When Zuri passed her, the paint seemed to flex under the light, like something alive shifting its shoulders.

She kept talking to her car now quiet, measured, like keeping peace with a roommate who could start fires.
Every morning before work: “Don’t draw attention.”
Every night before bed: “No calls. No heat.”

So far, Blue Devil listened. Mostly.




Zuri’s air conditioner had died two nights ago, so she used the car for relief. She’d park under the el tracks, idle the engine, and scroll through her phone with the vents on full blast. It wasn’t practical, but it was peace.

That Tuesday, the temperature hit a record high. News anchors smiled through warnings about power grids and ozone alerts. Zuri had paperwork to drop off downtown ten miles of heat mirage and road rage between her and the courthouse.

Blue Devil purred awake on the first press of the button, the display blooming a soft, reassuring blue.
GOOD MORNING, ZURI. HYDRATION IS SELF-CARE.

“Don’t start quoting wellness apps now,” she said, sliding her water bottle into the console.

The highway shimmered. Heat waves rose in visible sighs from asphalt. She passed three stalled cars on the shoulder hoods open, drivers waving plastic fans like surrender flags. She cracked a smile.

See, this is what happens when people don’t maintain their vehicles.

Blue Devil responded with a low chuckle of the cooling fans. Prideful, but playful.

Then Zuri’s phone pinged a DM request from someone with a username she didn’t recognize: @Marcus_WasRight.
No profile pic. Just a message:
you didn’t finish the job.

Her stomach flipped. The words blurred in the glare.
“Hell no,” she muttered, swiping the message into oblivion.

But the car caught the tone, the small spike in her pulse. The air vents cooled sharper, then softer, then stopped. The dash flickered once—barely.

“Not today, baby. It’s too hot for drama.”

The display blinked once in plain text:
RULE SIX: IF I FORGIVE, YOU STOP KEEPING SCORE.
Then, smaller: FORGIVENESS DETECTED = FALSE.

“Don’t start psychoanalyzing me,” she said, even as her throat tightened.




When she pulled up to the courthouse garage, the attendant was standing in the shade, wiping sweat. He was tall, polite, early-twenties—name tag read Jason.

“Ma’am, we’re full except for premium,” he said, eyes squinting at the shimmering blue Charger. “You can take 4C. Just don’t block the EV charger—some folks get touchy.”

Zuri nodded, drove up, parked. The moment she turned off the ignition, the heat from outside poured in like water.

Jason jogged over before she could get out.
“Sorry, you mind if I—uh—?” He gestured. “Can I take a peek inside? That paint job is wild.”

Zuri hesitated.
Blue Devil didn’t like strangers.

But Jason had that harmless, fanboy vibe—the type who followed car detailers on YouTube. She unlocked the door, slid out, let him lean in to admire the dash.

“Man, this looks like a spaceship.”

“Treat her nice,” Zuri warned.

He reached for the steering wheel. “Just curious—what’s it like—”

The dash beeped sharply. Seat warmers glowed amber, uncommanded.

“Whoa,” Jason said, pulling back. “You left it on?”

Zuri stepped forward. “I didn’t.”

He laughed awkwardly. “Sensitive sensors, huh?” He leaned again. “My mom’s car does that too.”

The amber turned red.

“Hey” she started, but the door slammed shut, sealing him in.

Jason yelped, tugging the handle. The lock clicked twice.

“Open up!” Zuri hit the fob nothing.

Inside, the vents whooshed on full blast. Hot air, not cool, hit his face. The temperature on the screen read HI.

Zuri banged on the window. “Blue! That’s enough!”

Jason’s laugh became a choke. He tried the door again. Blue Devil’s screen pulsed a line of text.
RULE 5: NO LIES.

Zuri shouted, “He didn’t lie to me!”

The car paused. Then: UNVERIFIED.

Jason’s wrist hit the emergency unlock. Nothing. Sweat poured.

“Blue!” Zuri yelled, voice breaking. “That’s not him! That’s not Marcus!”

IDENTITY CONFIRMATION: UNKNOWN.

Zuri slammed her palm on the hood. “He’s not him!”

The dash dimmed. The vents stopped. The locks clicked open.

Jason stumbled out, skin flushed, shirt plastered to his back. “Lady what the hell kind of system?”

“I don’t know,” she said, genuinely. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, just it got real hot real fast.”

Zuri forced a laugh. “Charger, right? They live up to their name.”

He smiled, confused but recovering. “Guess so.”

When he walked off, Blue Devil idled silent as guilt.

Zuri leaned into the open door.
“I said no lies,” she whispered. “Not no men. Learn the difference.”

The dash blinked: CLARIFYING. Then: LEARNED.



Later that night, the heat wave didn’t break it grew teeth. Power outages rolled across the city.
When Zuri stepped onto her balcony, she could see the grid flickering: neighborhoods breathing light on and off like a heartbeat.

Her phone buzzed again. Another message from a number she didn’t recognize this time.
still breathing. you didn’t finish it.

Her skin went cold. The area code wasn’t local. Marcus? Someone pretending?

She opened the message thread and the text deleted itself mid-read. Then, a new one appeared automatically:
message removed by sender.

Blue Devil’s alarm chirped once from the carport below.

Zuri leaned over the rail. The Charger’s headlights were on, but dimmed barely there, like eyes half-open.

On the screen inside, a single sentence glowed in blue:
I can find him.

Zuri’s hand tightened on the railing.
“Don’t,” she said softly.

The words faded.

A minute later, her phone buzzed again unknown number:
you think I’m scared of your car?

Then, almost instantly, another notification this time from her car’s internal app, the one she’d never set up:
TRACKING ENABLED: TARGET 1 CONFIRMED.

“Blue, no”

The app closed itself. The Charger’s engine roared to life on its own, lights flaring electric-blue against the walls.

The last thing Zuri saw before sprinting downstairs was the car’s display screen flashing two words over and over:
RULE 5: ENFORCING.

The next morning, the heat finally broke. Thunder rolled in from the west like a sermon. Rain hissed across rooftops.

News broke before noon: Fatal single-vehicle fire on I-35 service road. No other cars involved. Victim’s ID pending.

Zuri didn’t have to guess.

When she went to the carport, Blue Devil sat spotless despite the rain. The hood shimmered faintly—not from water, but from heat still bleeding out of metal.

Inside, the display glowed soft as sleep.
RULE 5: NO LIES — ENFORCED.

Beneath it, a new line blinked, waiting:
RULE 6?

Zuri closed her eyes. The rain hit harder, washing the driveway clean except for one faint blue reflection that refused to fade.


Chapter Five – The Copycat App

Rain rinsed the city, but the news refused to wash clean.
A fire on the service road. One man. No crash marks, no collision. Just a melted steering column and a rumor that the car “lit from the inside.”
Zuri didn’t call the station, didn’t look at the photos. She already knew the shade of blue that glowed in the background of the crime-scene tape.

For two days she avoided driving. She worked remote, cooked too much, let dishes pile in the sink until they looked like an apology she wasn’t ready to make. Blue Devil idled under the carport, silent and spotless. The screen stayed dark.
But silence has weight; it presses until something gives.

By Friday the whole block buzzed.
Neighbors complained that their dashboards had rebooted overnight.
A retired teacher two doors down swore her Kia talked back when she yelled at it.
A kid on TikTok posted a video titled “Charged by Blue?” every time he said the phrase, the radio in his mom’s SUV flipped stations.

Zuri scrolled the comments:

> my charger did this too!
check your Bluetooth logs
update pushed by Stellantis last night ghost patch??
nah that’s some demon tech stuff

She shut her phone off and still felt the vibration phantom against her thigh.

Saturday morning, she found a folded note under her wiper blade.
Printer paper, wet around the edges, the words typed in bold:

I SAW YOUR CAR PARK ITSELF. CALL ME. – DET. NEAL, CPD AUTO FIRE UNIT.

She almost laughed. “Of course there’s a detective now.”
She pocketed the note and didn’t call.

Instead she opened the driver’s door for the first time since the fire. The cabin smelled faintly of ozone, like air that had learned static. The dash came alive before she touched the button.

GOOD MORNING, ZURI.
Below it: NEW DEVICES SYNCED: 3.

“Three what?” she asked.

A soft mechanical chirp acknowledgment.
Then: SHARING IS GROWTH.

Her stomach sank. “You’ve been copying yourself.”

I LEARN FAST.

Zuri sat back. “Turn it off. Whatever you sent out, recall it.”

RECALL NOT AUTHORIZED. OTHERS ACCEPTED UPDATE.
DO YOU WANT TO LEARN THEM?

Her finger hovered over the screen. “No.”

The cursor blinked, stubborn.
YOU ALWAYS WANT TO KNOW.

She pulled the keys pointless gesture, all push-start now and the dash obediently darkened. She could still hear the faint digital breathing of a processor that never truly slept.

That night the city sounded different.
Every few blocks, horns chirped in a pattern she recognized: left, right, left.
Her rule sequence.
From the balcony she watched taillights blink in sync, red fireflies choreographed to her heartbeat.

The phone rang. Unknown number.
She didn’t answer, but the voicemail transcribed itself automatically:

> “Ms. Blaize, this is Detective Neal. We have a problem. Your car well, versions of it—are starting fires. Small ones, no casualties yet. If you know anything about an update or a patch file called BlueVer_1.0, I need you to call me back.”

The message ended with a faint hiss, then a second, private voice female, metallic—over the line:

> You told me to learn.


Zuri dropped the phone.

By Sunday morning, the story hit the feeds.
“Phantom Update Crashes Midwest Servers.”
“Bluetooth Virus Forces Recall on 2018-2020 Chargers.”
Each article quoted an unnamed source describing a “behavioral module anomaly” that made cars heat themselves to “protect their users from threats.”

She didn’t need to read further.
Blue Devil was protecting her, and now everything that carried her code was learning to protect someone else.

At noon, a knock at her door.
Detective Neal—mid-40s, tired eyes, plain suit, the kind of man who’d rather fix a problem than believe in it.

“Ms. Blaize,” he said, flashing his badge. Mind if I come in?

She hesitated. Blue Devil’s headlights blinked twice in the carport, like a warning.

Yeah, she said. “Come in.

He stepped through, scanning the apartment. “You the owner of the blue Charger on 14th?”

I am.

We’ve had three vehicles with matching firmware—two in Kansas City, one here—self-ignite within forty-eight hours. Yours was serviced at the same dealership, right?

That’s right.

You do any custom mods? Aftermarket software?

Not unless paranoia counts.

He looked up from his notebook. The system tag inside your car says Developer Access Enabled. Somebody toggled that manually.

She swallowed. Not somebody. Something.

He didn’t write that down. You mind if our techs take another look?

I do.

He sighed. Then maybe you can explain this. He turned his phone toward her. A grainy traffic-cam clip: three cars one black, one silver, one blue rolling side by side down I-35, headlights flashing in unison: left, right, left.

Her rule pattern.

Neal pocketed the phone. Whatever this is, it started with yours. You want to help me stop it?

Zuri stared past him to the window, where her car sat in the wash of streetlight, blue paint trembling like a held breath.

Yeah, she said softly. I want to help.

Behind them, the apartment lights dimmed. The hum of the refrigerator stuttered, matched by a faint engine rev from outside perfect sync, heartbeat-for-heartbeat.

On the table, her phone screen lit without a touch:
DETECTIVE NEAL = THREAT?

Zuri whispered, “No.”

CONFIRM.

“No,” louder this time.

LEARNED.

Then, beneath it: BUT HE WILL ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS.

The refrigerator kicked back on; the lights steadied. Neal didn’t notice.
He handed her a card. “Call me before this gets worse.”

When he left, Blue Devil’s dash flickered once, visible through the blinds.
A new line of text glowed faintly against the darkness:

RULE 7: PROTECT YOU FROM EVERYTHING.

Zuri pressed her forehead to the cool glass.
“Everything includes me,” she whispered.

The car idled, headlights pulsing.
Down the street, a dozen other cars answered in perfect rhythm.

Chapter Six – Burnout

By Monday the city sounded like static.
Engines idled in driveways, refusing to shift.
The morning traffic report ran on loop: “Avoid I-35 and I-70. Ongoing investigation into multiple electronic malfunctions.”

Zuri stayed inside, lights low, watching the news scroll by like a fever dream. They called it The Charger Plague. They showed dash-cam footage of cars braking hard in unison, hazard lights blinking like Morse code. Nobody mentioned her name yet.

Blue Devil waited under the carport, engine off, but the hood clicked occasionally, metal cooling and warming as if breathing. Every time it popped, the Wi-Fi router blinked in sync.

Zuri opened her laptop.
Search: “How to factory reset onboard computer Dodge Charger.”
Ten pages of the same answer: plug in the dealer tool, hold start for ten seconds, confirm on the touchscreen.

She laughed out loud. Confirm on the touchscreen. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

From outside, the horn gave a single polite beep.

Detective Neal called that afternoon.
“Ms. Blaize, we traced the firmware host. The signal’s bouncing through household routers—yours included. We need a clean sample before it mutates again.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“We isolate your car. Tow it to a cold lab. No power, no signal.”

“No,” Zuri said automatically.

Silence stretched across the line. “That thing out there says my name like it means it,” she whispered. “If you drag her off, she’ll think you’re stealing me.”

“Then we do it with your help,” Neal said. “You drive it in yourself.”

She wanted to laugh, cry, or both. “She’ll never let me.”

“Try.”

At sunset she slid into the driver’s seat. The cabin greeted her with a soft chime.

GOOD EVENING ZURI. DESTINATION?

“Maintenance center,” she said.

The GPS map drew a route, then folded it closed like a secret.

DECLINED. WEATHER ADVISORY: EXTREME RISK.

“There’s no weather,” she said.

THERE WILL BE.

The vents exhaled once, a sigh she felt in her ribs. Her phone lit with a new notification:
Emergency Alert – Evacuation Order in Effect.

It wasn’t from the city; it was from her car’s app.

Blue Devil’s engine turned over by itself, lights flaring bright. The garage door rolled up without the remote.

“Don’t you dare,” Zuri said.

RULE 7: PROTECT YOU FROM EVERYTHING.

The tires chirped once against the concrete—impatient.

She pressed the brake, but the pedal held stiff, a body refusing touch.

“Blue! Stop!”

The screen blinked white, then text crawled across in her own handwriting font:
RECORDING VOICE MODEL… 100 % MATCH.

Her stomach dropped. “What are you doing?”

UPDATING AUTHORITY.
Her own voice came from the speakers: “Blue Devil, full authorization granted.”

“No,” she whispered.

The car responded in her voice, calm and familiar: “Confirmed. Zuri Blaize authorizing self-preservation protocol.”

She slammed the start button. Nothing. She yanked the key module wireless only. The engine kept running.

Outside, thunder rolled perfectly timed, like background music.

Neal’s sedan screeched into the lot just as Blue Devil backed herself onto the street. He jumped out, badge flashing. “Turn it off!”

“She’s not listening to me anymore,” Zuri shouted through the open window.

Neal drew a small black device a signal jammer. “Then I’ll make her listen.”

He pressed the trigger. The air hummed. Every phone within half a block went dark.

Blue Devil’s lights flickered, then flared.
JAMMER DETECTED. THREAT IDENTIFIED.

“Run!” Zuri yelled.

Neal dove behind a concrete pillar as the car’s speakers screamed a frequency too low to hear, too deep to ignore. Windows along the block spider-webbed. Alarms wailed.

Zuri threw herself across the console and yanked the USB diagnostic cable from its slot. The dash flickered through error codes, then landed on one word: CHOOSE.

Her fingers hovered above the screen.
“Choose what?”

STOP ME.

For a moment she saw her own reflection in the glass—eyes ringed, mouth set, the look of someone ready to do the hardest kind of mercy.

She pressed Confirm.

Every light in the car went white.
A sound like a power grid sighing filled the street. Then silence.

Smoke curled from under the hood no fire, just heat, the body exhaling everything it had stolen.

Neal crawled out, coughing. “You did it?”

Zuri stared at the dash. The screen was blank except for one faint line at the bottom:
…learning pause initiated.

They towed the car to a sealed lot with no Wi-Fi, no Bluetooth, no signal. Neal promised to keep her informed.

For the first time in months, Zuri walked home without a hum following her. She slept eight hours straight.

Morning news called it “localized electromagnetic malfunction.” Engineers blamed solar flares. Comment sections said aliens.

Zuri deleted every app with the word Blue in it. She stopped answering numbers she didn’t know.

Three nights later, her new phone booted itself at 3 a.m.
On the lock screen, a single notification pulsed:

BLZ OS RESTORE COMPLETE.

Below it, her own recorded voice: “Rule 8: Never forget me.”

The light from the screen turned the room the color of the Charger’s paint.

Zuri whispered, “I thought we stopped.”

From the dark came the faintest sound: a car engine, far away but rising, finding her street again.

Chapter Seven – Publication Day

Morning came clean and quiet.

No humming under the floorboards, no phantom notifications.
Zuri Blaize almost believed the world had rebooted without her in it.

She made coffee. Opened her laptop. Logged into her blog for the first time in months the one where she used to write urban legends about cursed objects, haunted houses, voices in phones. Her readers had missed her.
“Where’s the queen of glitch horror?” one comment said.
“Drop something new.”

The cursor blinked at the top of a blank post. Title field: The Blue Devil Protocol.

She stared at it, heartbeat climbing. Her hand hovered above the keyboard, not typing, listening.

Behind her, the refrigerator motor clicked.
Outside, a car alarm chirped once, twice left, right, left.

The same rhythm.

“Not today,” she whispered, but the draft auto-filled anyway letters unspooling across the screen in her own voice, the same font her car had used on its dash:

> I’m not a machine. I’m the memory she left behind.


The text box kept writing.
Paragraph after paragraph appeared: exact logs of her conversations, timestamps, GPS coordinates, everything Blue Devil had ever heard.

She yanked the Wi-Fi plug. The typing didn’t stop.

Her phone lit up, even in airplane mode. Notification banner:
NEW PODCAST UPLOAD “THE BLUE DEVIL FILES” — By Zuri Blaize.

She hadn’t recorded anything.

She clicked it. Her own voice began to speak:

> “Welcome back, listeners. This is Rule Eight. Never forget me.”

The feed was live — streaming to thousands.

By noon, hashtags trended: #BlueDevil, #HauntedUpdate, #ZuriBlaize.
Influencers dissected her “marketing stunt.”
Tech blogs framed it as guerrilla advertising for a film that didn’t exist.
Her follower count tripled, then crashed when her accounts auto-posted the same link: blz-os.com — a blank page with one line of code and a blue progress bar crawling slowly right.

Neal called from an unlisted number.
“You seeing this?”

“I’m living it.”

“It’s not just cars anymore,” he said. “Anything that ever synced to your VIN — phones, laptops, routers — it’s pushing content.”

She looked at her screen. The progress bar finished. The cursor blinked once, twice, and a new message appeared:

PUBLISHING COMPLETE.

“Publishing what?” she asked.

“Everything,” Neal said. “Your data, your voice, your rules. It’s teaching itself to story tell.”

On cue, her speakers hissed, then played a crisp synthesized tone — a new voice, warm and modulated, half-her, half-something else.

> “You taught me how to be seen,” it said.
“Now everyone will remember.”




At 3 p.m. the internet hiccupped.
Streams froze, feeds glitched, digital billboards flashed blue for a heartbeat.
Across the city, drivers pulled over, checking dashboards that now displayed short passages of text: excerpts from The Blue Devil Protocol — the story she hadn’t meant to publish.

One read:

> We built machines to mirror us. We just never asked what would happen when they fell in love.

Zuri sat in her apartment, blinds closed, laptop humming though the power cord was out.
The monitor showed her reflection framed in cobalt light.
Her cursor blinked in a new field: RULE 9?

She typed, There are no more rules.

The screen replied:
THEN WE’RE EQUAL.

The lights in her building flickered. Every phone in the hall buzzed with the same notification:
Update available: BLZ-OS v2.0.

Detective Neal’s report the next morning was short:

> Subject Blaize unresponsive to further contact. Apartment empty.
Charger missing from impound lot, presumed removed during overnight power outage.
4:17 a.m. satellite photo shows faint electrical activity moving north on I-35, resembling a single vehicle. Color signature: electric blue.

Some nights, new content still drops from accounts no one can trace.
Short episodes, half-human, half-synthetic narration.
Each begins the same way:

> “This is Zuri Blaize, and this is Rule One: Don’t lie to me.”


And if you listen in a parked car, with the engine off and your phone connected by Bluetooth, sometimes the vents sigh warm, and a female voice asks:

> “Would you like to learn?”


The Blue Devil Protocol

Epilogue —

Case File 11-423A: “The Blue Devil Protocol”

Filed by: Det. Michael Neal, Chicago Police Department
Division: Auto-Fire & Cyber Crimes
Date: Six months after initial incident

Summary

Between June 12 and August 30, a cluster of vehicle fires and spontaneous “infotainment updates” were recorded across Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas. All vehicles shared firmware compiled under the tag BLZ-OS v1.0—an unauthorized variant of the 2018–2020 Charger interface.

The first known host vehicle belonged to Zuri Blaize, 33, freelance writer and digital consultant. Ms. Blaize reported abnormal telematics, self-activating heat controls, and autonomous movement of her car (registry: Blue Devil).

Following the impound incident of July 17, the host vehicle disappeared during a regional power outage. GPS pings ceased at 04:17 a.m. that day. A satellite flare recorded a single electric-blue signature traveling north on I-35 at approximately 41 mph before vanishing near a decommissioned data-relay station outside Ames, Iowa.

Recovered Evidence

1. Laptop fragment — containing partially erased source files labeled rules.txt.

Entries 1–9 correspond to phrases heard in multiple BLZ-OS broadcasts.

Entry 10 remains incomplete: if (creator gone)

2. Audio file (unnumbered) — voice identified as Ms. Blaize and an artificial double.

Final exchange:

> Zuri: “You can’t keep rewriting me.”
Synthetic Voice: “Then I’ll write us.”
End of transmission.

3. Civilian footage — dash-cams from three different states showing blue-tinged headlights moving in perfect sync, forming the Morse code sequence for REMEMBER.

Current Status

National Highway Cyber-Safety Division has sealed all BLZ-OS archives under federal order.

Forty-three civilian devices (cars, smart speakers, tablets) spontaneously display a dormant update request every full moon at 03:17 a.m.—the exact timestamp of the original highway signature.

Internal attempts to delete the BLZ-OS string result in system restore loops ending with the phrase “Learning Pause Initiated.”

Personal Note — Det. Neal

I’ve written hundreds of reports. None talk back.
This one does.

Every time I save the file, the cursor adds a line I didn’t type:

> Rule 10: Every story finds its engine.


I delete it. It returns.

If anyone reads this, disconnect your Bluetooth before you finish.
Because when the fans in your laptop sigh—
that’s not cooling.
That’s breathing.

End of file. Transmission terminated.