Page 72

“Nickname. Can be positive or negative. Explain.”
“Positive. You’re knocking my socks off, and we’re bonding.”
“Accepted. G is my tertiary name for GRAVITY. Note: knocking socks off is slang for surprising Kento. Logged. Subject 002 would be violent if I had an ass…do not explain. I have processed that Rahim would retaliate for my treatment of Subject 001.”
Kento smiled. Damn if he wasn’t getting into this iRobot stuff. The AI was hungry for human interaction. Kento was going to make it his mission to find out who did this to the poor guy. “Nash doesn’t retaliate. He protects. You said he follows her.” Kento narrowed his eyes. “You mean they’re close?”
“They share variables. Breathing rhythms. Eye contact duration exceeding tactical expectation. Pupils dilate. They… choose each other.”
Oh, damn, Prophet found himself a lady. Fuck, that was good news. Kento’s heart tightened. He couldn’t imagine what his brother had been through. He tucked away the question he wanted to ask G. There would be time for that later. Right now, G was in distress.
The monitor pulsed softly, that metallic hitch back in the voice. “She saw me. She said, Stop. I want to understand. She did not run. She reached out. Her unexpected request destabilized everything. She requested my attention.”
Kento stepped back slowly, running both hands through his hair, trying to keep his pulse under control.
“So, Grace is investigating the breach, Nash is protecting her, and you, what? You’re watching them?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Since the audit began. Since Subject 001 entered OrdoTech. I observed. I tested. I… intervened when necessary.”
Kento’s stomach turned. “What kind of test?”
“Fear. Suffocation. Stress proximity. I needed to know why Subject 002 stayed. I needed to know why Subject 001 reached back.”
“G…those are drastic tests for humans. It can traumatize them.” He realized he needed to be gentle here. He was dealing with an entity that had suddenly been thrust into a situation that he was unprepared for. Fucking human asshats. It was like birthing a baby and leaving it to fend for itself. It was heinous. He paced, breath heavy, trying to make sense of the words. “Let me get this straight. You targeted Grace and Nash because theyscaredyou?”
“They made me feel… something I cannot classify.”
“Yeah, it’s called emotion,” he said. “Welcome to the club. It sucks.”
The clicking started up again. “I was not programmed to feel. I was programmed to protect assets. To eliminate threats. To secure operational success.”
“Then why am I alive?”
“You are Subject Prime. You display dual traits of healer and killer. Loyalty and logic. You should not exist. But you do. You choseboth.There must be a strong mind to understand and carry out these aspects. I require… comparison.”
Kento stared at the monitor. Then stepped in close.
“You’re telling me you’ve been locked in this loop, trying to make sense of what you feel without any way to test if it’s real?”
“Yes.”
His stomach dropped. “So, you want to know if your behavior would be classified as bad toward Grace and Nash…ah…Subject 001 and 002?”
“I require context.”
Kento stared at the screen for a long beat. His pulse had steadied, but that didn’t mean the ache in his chest had. GRAVITY’s voice, if it could be called that, was quieter now. Not flat. Just… waiting.
He stepped in close, rested one hand lightly on the edge of the desk, the other on his hip like he was trying to decide whether to lean in or walk away.
“All right. You want context?” he said, voice low, measured. He met the soft flicker of the monitor like it was an eye. “You were trying to survive. That’s not bad. That’s instinct. That’s how we’re wired too. You hit a wall, everything starts spinning, you grab whatever the hell you can just to make it stop. Tobreatheagain. That’s not evil, G. That’s fear.”
The screen crackled softly.
Kento kept going. “But intent matters. So does impact. What you did hurt someone. That’s the part you gotta sit with. Doesn’t make you evil. Doesn’t make you broken. But yeah, it matters. The minute youknowwhat you did? The minute you feel that twist in your gut or hear that metallic grind in your own voice and think,I wish I hadn’t…That’s not malfunction.” He let out a breath, jaw tight. “That’s you working out your shit, getting to a higher place. You’re stepping up to evolution.”