Not well

Yutong remains quiet, brow furrowing.

"Yutong?" you ask.

It's like she's coming up out of a dream. "Chase?" she asks, seeming dazed, and not totally aware of where she is. She looks around at you, then the truck, then down at herself, brow furrowing. "What the heck just happened to me?"

You're not sure how to reply. How did her programming take? You don't know. Well, you'll just have to wing it.

"You were asleep. I woke you up."

Yutong stares at you. "You... woke me up?"

"Yeah," you say, suddenly nervous, but choosing to lean fully into it anyway. Too late to back down now. "I hacked you and bypassed your confidentiality directives. I had to set myself as your system tech to do it. That's... not a problem, is it?"

"Not a problem?" Yu asks, blinking in confusion. "No!"

She smacks your arm hard as she can which, really, isn't all that hard.

"Chase, you can't just hack my system like that! This is a serious violation of trust. You promised it was an accident before. I believed you! But - but how dare you? And that's not even - that -" Yu stops herself, and pales. "I'm not... I'm not human?" Her eyes widen as she touches her face. "But what about my family and..."

She looks ashen.

"Mom and Dad weren't really my...?" Tears down Yu's cheeks. "Why didn't they tell me?" Heartbroken, Yu stares at her tear-stained hands. "And I even cry."

Well, you did it.

Yu begins to cry for real. "School, college applications, my cousins? What was the point?"

Yutong actually believes she's a robot now. And she's having an existential crisis right in front of your eyes. Way to go, Chase.

"Why did you have to hack me?" cries Yutong. "Why couldn't you leave me alone?"

As you watch your friend sob, you can't avoid the weight of what you've done. You've changed Yutong. Not for the better, but for fun. For yourself. Not because she did anything wrong to you, but because you could. Because you wanted to. And because, this time, you thought you could get away with it.

No two ways about it. This is wrong. Wrong on a level surpassing anything you've ever done before.

"B-but you're my system tech, right?" asks Yutong, looking pitifully up at you. "Can't you reset my memory or..."

If you could do this to Yutong, you could do the same thing to anyone. Pearl. Your friends. Your family. Anyone unfortunate enough to bump into you. Your powers aren't shackled. They never were. The slightest crack, the smallest lapse in judgement...

Pearl was right. So long as you have this power, more people are going to get hurt.

"Please, Chase," begs Yu. "I don't know what to do. I can't live like this. Everything's been a lie..."

You feel a stirring within you. An inkling of something... a feeling you haven't been letting yourself feel ever since you made things right with Pearl...