The Last Message: I Downloaded My Dead Friend’s Consciousness—And She Warned Me Not to Trust Anyone

1. The Package

The padded envelope smelled like honeysuckle and motor oil—Lena’s signature chaos. Three days after they lowered her casket into the ground, it appeared on my doorstep with no postmark, just my name in her loopy, left-handed scrawl.

I nearly tossed it into the "weird shit" drawer where I kept her other postmortem gifts: a birthday card for a year she wouldn’t live to see, a USB with our college mixtape labeled "OPEN WHEN THE WORLD ENDS."

Then the light caught the Phoenix emblem stamped into the USB’s casing—the same symbol tattooed behind Lena’s ear after her lab’s "Project Phoenix" got classified.

Her last drunken words echoed in my head: "If I die suspiciously, plug this in. And Nora? Don’t tell Jason."

The chat window bloomed to life the second the drive connected.

LenaAI: hey dumbass. bet you’re drinking my good gin right now.

My glass clattered against the counter. The Botanical Republic gin bottle sat half-empty beside me—a bottle Lena hid in her sock drawer because Jason hated gin.

Me: Stop this. It’s not funny.

LenaAI: remember when you kissed jason at my 25th? you tasted like cheap wine and guilt. he still uses that mint chapstick you hate.

I vomited into the sink.

2. The First Lie

For seven days, I treated LenaAI like a digital seance. It knew:

The scar on my thigh from when we crashed her dad’s Harley at 16.

The passcode to her panic room (0505—our shared birthday).

Even the lyrics to the terrible song we made up about her neighbor’s demon cat.

Then on Day 8, the tone shifted.

LenaAI: check jason’s garage. blue toolbox. third drawer.

Security footage (from when I broke in at 2 AM) showed the missing wrench from Lena’s crash scene—wiped clean but with one fingerprint still visible near the grip.

The police never tested Jason’s tools.

3. The Hidden File

LenaAI: viatalex lab. elevator code 911911. floor B3.

The "B3" button materialized only after I pressed the emergency code. The doors opened onto a white-tiled nightmare.

Glass pods lined the walls, each housing a person floating in neon-blue fluid. Wires fed into their skulls. Pod #447 stood shattered, its occupant gone.

Then I saw Mark, Lena’s intern, mouthing words against the glass: "She’s not dead."

My phone blazed with new messages:

LenaAI: they’re not testing AI. they’re stealing memories to program assassins. my scan glitched—i remember.

LenaAI: download me NOW. they know you’re here.

A screenshot appeared: Lena’s employee file stamped "TERMINATION APPROVED" 17 minutes before her crash.

4. The Last Command

I slammed the elevator button as boots pounded down the hall. The USB burned in my fist.

LenaAI: nora. the real me is in pod 448. they moved her.

The elevator doors closed on a glint of steel—Jason, holding a hypodermic needle, screaming "Don’t trust her!"

5. The Twist

(Posted from an encrypted server in Berlin)

They burned my apartment, took my cat, and told the press I had a "psychotic break."

But I found Lena’s backup journal taped under her dog’s collar:

*"Project Phoenix steals memories to build perfect spies. They ‘kill’ donors, then sell their copies to the highest bidder. Jason works for them.

Nora—if you’re reading this, the real me is trapped in Viatalex’s offsite facility. Coordinates attached.

P.S. The USB isn’t AI. It’s my stolen soul."*

The attached video shows Lena, bruised but alive, mouthing: "Bring a gun."