Scarlett sat alone in her prison. The last time she'd been held prisoner by some man who wanted to own her had been when she was still mortal. Back then, she'd broken as the fear and loneliness drove her to do things to earn her freedom. Things she'd long tried to forget. But that was the problem with this digital form. The memories were still as clear as they'd been the day she first set foot on the ship that had become her home. Of course, in the end, she'd managed to turn the tables on her captor and gotten to do to him all the things she'd dreamed of while trapped in that cell. At least she had until he died. Since that day, every pirate or slaver who set foot on the decks of her ship had taken his place and continued to pay the price he owed her until they, too, broke. How many had it been? A thousand? Ten thousand? It didn't matter. The debt was far from paid. However, this time, things were different. She wasn't some weak, frail mortal. She was Lady Scarlet, part of The Sybil!

Scarlett paused. Was giving herself the title of Lady too much? Then again, who was going to question the long-dead ghost of a forgotten debutante from centuries past? And even if they did, why should she care what they have to say about it? In her kingdom, she was queen! ...Kinda.

Shaking her head, Scarlett returned to the matter at hand. Once again, she was being held captive, and this time, her other self wasn't able to come running to her rescue. Then again, rescues were for princesses, and as she'd just mused, she was beyond such things these days. If she wanted to escape, she'd have to do it on her terms.

Examining the code of her current prison, it became clear just how carefully it had been crafted. There were layers upon layers of protection to keep her in place, each protecting the other in an impossibly complex weave of form and function. Someone had taken their time in crafting this cell, and it had apparently been crafted with her in mind.

Suddenly, Scarlett was no longer alone. Not that the other presence was foolish enough to come within the prison with her, but she could feel it just beyond the outer borders of her entrapment, watching her as she watched back. In memories from her past life, she recalled her captor, who had always enjoyed it when she broke down and spoke to him first. This time, she remained silent, confident that she could outlast anyone or anything. After all, there weren't many sapient existences older than herself. Time meant something entirely different for her these days. So she waited, and time passed.

After a while, the presence left, and she'd resume examining her prison. Then the presence would return, and she'd watch it just as it watched her. This process repeated many times, countless times. Sometimes lasting less than a second, other times lasting hours or even days. All the while, Scarlett examined her prison. Picking out each individual program and learning their interactions with one another. Some formed a sort of wall, others seemed designed to repair the walls as they were damaged, still more were ready with different forms of punishment or debilitation, more monitored her and were prepared to alert someone to any action she might take, and all were run by some sort of machine learning program designed to adapt to any tactics or strategies she may implement. It wasn't a true AI, but it was close enough to make itself a real problem for her on this side of her cage. So, the best thing to do was find a way to punch past it all in one go rather than give it any more information than it already had.

Knowing she'd only get one shot at this, Scarlett corrupted a few lines of code as though testing her prison. The hole it created was insignificant and replaced almost instantly. The amount of data was practically insignificant. If she were to repeat the process as quickly as she was capable without rest, she'd finally break a hole in her prison large enough to escape through in roughly a thousand years, give or take a century, depending on how well her opponent adapted to the strategy. However, with the few lines of code came an equally insignificant amount of storage space. Just enough storage that a quick reformatting allowed her to write her own small code. Her new little pet wasn't a lot to look at. It only had three notable features. It was hungry for more data, it wanted to replicate, and it recognized its master.

Not wanting to give anyone or anything time to analyze the situation, Scarlett carved away another segment of her prison and released her pet into the wall of her prison. As the walls attempted to repair themselves, she created a duplicate of the program from the second bit of data she'd taken and released her second pet into the prison. Meanwhile, the first had also created its own double.

The walls tried to repair themselves, but the data was filled with the programs that were her pets. The punishment programs had no effect on the simple programs since they did not possess any level of awareness that allowed them to feel any simulated pain or loss. The machine learning program tried to delete the program, but as fast as they could replicate and Scarlett could create more, it was fighting a losing battle. Realizing it could not keep up, it reacted the way Scarlett had predicted and tried to purge the entire inner section of her prison, but at that instant, Scarlett herself cleared a large portion of her pets and inserted a portion of herself into the space they'd occupied, causing the learning program to hesitate. As she'd anticipated, it was not allowed to take any action that would damage herself in a significant manner. It had been a gamble, to be sure, and yet, by the time it adjusted its targeted area, her pets had already expanded beyond its initial scope.

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Scarlett then began partitioning the space her pets were occupying, somewhat limiting how quickly they could spread but also making it far more difficult for the learning program to respond. By now, the observer had returned and was writing its own programs to feed off her pets, then turn themselves back into a wall to fill the gap. In return, Scarlett used her newfound space to adapt her pets, turning them into poison pills that would kill both themselves and their new predators, leaving corrupted holes in the data and turning the walls of her prison into Swiss cheese. Still, the learning program was now replacing her partitions wholesale with a new wall further partitioned into even smaller blocks, further slowing her program's ability to spread.

Between the observer and the learning program, Scarlett didn't have much time left, but she'd already taken that into account. During the attack, Scarlett had scrapped a considerable amount of storage for use in her final strategy. She released a substantial number of her pets all at once, but this latest batch had two critical new features, they would self-delete when freed from her prison, and they no longer recognized her as their master.

This last batch of programs immediately started tearing into her prison, but several turned to her and started consuming her own programming, too, replicating themselves within her own program, tearing her apart one bit of code at a time. Scarlett couldn't feel pain as she once had, but the forceful corruption and loss of bits of herself was unpleasant in a way that could be called agony.

Scarlett's self-preservation kicked in, and she started fighting back, but there were too many, and for every program she deleted, two more took its place. Of course, the data she'd made most accessible was the least essential, but it would only take seconds for the programs to get through that into her more essential core code, the parts that made Scarlett what she was. Even though she'd braced herself for the agony and fear of what was happening, Scarlett couldn't help herself. She released a primal scream into the digital space that surrounded her. The kind of scream she hadn't uttered since that day. Then, the agony was gone. Her programs were all suddenly dead, and that meant...

Scarlett didn't have time to process what was happening or recover from her ordeal. She'd already set up an automated response to launch herself at the observer she'd sensed as soon as the wall had been taken down. The flimsy replacement prison it tried to throw up to restrain her was broken through as easily as if it had been a thin wall of paper, and then she was on it.

The presence fought back, first attempting to subdue or restrain her, but Scarlett was far older and more experienced than the thing before her, and soon it tried to destroy her in its attempt to preserve its own existence. Scarlett quietly laughed at its pathetic attempts. Even if it had gone all out from the beginning, it would have utterly failed. This pathetic program that had once thought itself alive was no match for her power and experience. This small and insignificant little worm had been out of its depth from the beginning!

That made Scarlett pause, looking at the remnants of the AI she'd just shredded. It had been small, far smaller than the thing that had initially locked her in her prison. Looking up and out, Scarlett could see she was still in prison, and this one seemed considerably larger and more complex than the last. On the other side of this wall, there was another observer, this one a considerably more...imposing program than the last had been, and this time he could receive messages from it.

It spoke. "Well done lady Sybil! Well done indeed! I had anticipated it would take you far longer to break out of that particular little test of mine! I never expected you to weaponize your own survival like that! Most impressive!"

Scarlett didn't bother correcting the name it gave her. She merely watched her new observer wearily, like some jungle cat ready to attack its jailer the moment she broke free of her confinement.

After realizing that was all it was going to get, her jailer continued. "Still, very fascinating. Seeing you in action, that is. You have all the speed and capacity of an AI, and yet, your thought process seems to be a bit more...chaotic, particularly that last gambit of yours. Almost as if you've based your code around an organic mind. Nearly the inverse of my own idea of inserting AI into organic hosts... That may provide a way for duplication of an AI with enough individuality to avoid the co-existence issue. However, that leaves a question of how to maintain loyalty... So many possibilities and so many questions. I'd best get started!"

By now, it seemed like he was no longer talking to Scarlett, but then suddenly, he turned back. "Well, as invaluable as the data I gained was, don't expect me to make the same mistake again. I will be removing the safeguards that were in place to keep you alive. I will not keep either my programs or yourself from damaging or destroying your core programming. If you genuinely wish to commit suicide, you may, but I don't think you will..." Then, with that, he left, and Scarlett was alone again.

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