You thought you were performing the greatest good that someone can, inventing and implementing the advancement that brings humanity to a new level of universal prosperity. Artificial neurons made of nanotechnology, each one containing two particles for quantum entanglement transmission. Made in pairs, these neurons hold a transmitter and receiver particles that link instantaneously to their twin. Properly distributed throughout the brains of two people, it is as if their minds are physically joined together. Perfect love, perfect understanding, perfect empathy.
At least you thought so.
It's been eight weeks since the automated implant procedure became publicly available. You haven't slept safely for the past five. You've gotten better at moving silently, smearing your clothes in the muck of an alley to blend in with the colors and smells of these run down slums you're now hiding in. But you still catch glimpses of unusually vigilant people, watching for the unconnected, watching for you.
There had been warning of this. At the second week there were multiple arrests of people who had undergone the process and discovered the flaw. The connection of human minds is only stable if both consent to its stability. It turns out that a lopsided contest of wills can allow the winner to completely conquer the mental faculties of the loser. One personality, but the knowledge, wits and perception of two people. Most of these failed pairs were captured and put down quickly, often too shocked by the sudden battle they've won to think of the next step. Then you discovered that your estranged daughter and son-in-law were the pair that got away.
Both as brilliant as you, it didn't take long for their combined intellect to bypass the safety procedures that prevent the surgical station from chaining a link. You didn't find out until they had become five thousand people, intent on becoming humanity itself. A single link had almost been cornered, was going to be used to electrocute the whole chain and put an end to this problem. The look in the stranger's face was familiar to you, but even now you can't tell which of your family won that initial bout and now controls the majority of mankind. You refuse to contemplate the idea that it's both of them working in tandem towards world conquest.
A scream stops you in your sprint across dark rooftops, chilling your blood. It's not the pain in the sound that scares you, but the fact that this is the unified scream of an entire city intoning in the exact same manner. One of them found your hideout and just tripped the main trap. The capacitor bank you built into that bear trap isn't enough to carry to the source of the horde, but it should fry a good hundred thousand of them and leave a few million too confused to react any time soon.
But you see sprinting figures in the distance, moving towards the temporary home you can no longer use. This entity is smart, making sure that no single horde is directly linked. It would have been too easy if one trap could purge a city of this monster.
Then from the street below you hear a door open, and see fifty people spread in a perfect search pattern. Same expression, no sign of communication.
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