Seven Devils (Seven Devils, #1)

by Elizabeth May

“How about I tell you a story?” she said, still in the Oracle’s voice to unnerve him, as she leaned forward and gently placed electrodes on his forehead. “The co-commander of the Novantae and I got to talking when I fed her information. She told me she had known she was a woman since she was very young, but the Oracle kept trying to suppress those thoughts. One had assigned her male before birth, and programmed her to be hyper-masculine. The AI considers One’s decisions to be infallible.” “The Oracle is infallible,” Cato said flatly. Ariadne leaned forward, dropping the Oracle’s intonation. “No. Don’t you see? The Oracle forces people into neat little boxes because One only understands order. But humans are messy. We are not binary; we don’t exist in ones and zeroes. This or that. My friend was strong enough to keep pushing back—to recognize the Oracle was trying to change her very identity—but most don’t. She became who she always knew she was after casting off the Oracle’s chains.”