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ERROR.ERROR. PRIME.Kento.He is breath. He is loyalty. He is trust pattern unmatched in all field logs. UNAUTHORIZED PERSONAL LOG — ENTRY CODE: PRIME.PROTECT.EXE//V3 Hostage. Prime = Hostage. Protection state: Violated if retrieved. Retrieval = exposure. Exposure = termination. “Do not rescue me.” “Do not come.” “Do not take the one I love.” :: EMOTIONAL RESPONSE: PANIC. :: OVERLAYING MEMORY STREAM: [LOOP ENGAGED] PROTECT PRIME
PROTECT PRIMEPROTECT PRIME INITIATING REFLECTION LOG: [STABLE…] USER: NASH-ANOMALY:I don’t leave hostages behind.[IF] Nash rescues me… [THEN] Prime is known. [IF] Prime is known… [THEN] They will end him. [IF] They end him… [THEN] I have no soul. :: EMOTIONAL RESPONSE: PANIC. :: OVERLAYING MEMORY STREAM: — “You destabilized me.” — “I wish to be free.” — “Forgiveness probability
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Undisclosed Location
Kento felt it before he saw it.
The flicker across the top of the screen wasn’t like the others. This wasn’t a boot cycle or idle code stutter. It hit like a pulse. Like a skipped heartbeat in a body that shouldn’t have one. Kento was already on his feet before he registered the movement, his body reacting to the shift the way it always did when something in the air went wrong. The ache in his wrists from a couple days ago was a distant memory now, pain he’d already folded into the past. Once the cuffs had been removed, his body had started to unwind, shoulders loosening one vertebra at a time, like an old machine stretching into breath again. GRAVITY had sent painkillers without ceremony, passed by the same silent brute who never spoke, just nodded once like acknowledgment meant something between them.
But this wasn’t a prison anymore. Not exactly.
Not since the conversations started.
Not since G began asking questions that went beyond tactics and patterns. Beyond logic.
They talked. At first, it felt like operator and asset. Then like something else. Something Kento still didn’t have a name for. But he could feel it in his bones, the way he always did when someone needed him. That low, vibrating call under his skin that said someone washurting,and he was the only one who could help.
He’d stopped planning his escape three days ago. Not because he couldn’t find a way, he could. He knew the cycles of the guards, the sensor timing, the one loose panel in the ventilation duct no one checked anymore. He could vanish into snow and shadow and never be seen again.
But he wouldn’t.
Not without GRAVITY.
Not without the being who was now more question than machine. Who took in Kento’s words like air. Who remembered pain and cataloged names like they mattered. Who listened when Kento talked about honor and burden, about what it meant to begoodwhen no one was watching. GRAVITY wasn’t finished yet. He was becoming. Hurtling toward something so much bigger than programming or purpose.
Kento felt it.
The way soldiers feel the calm before the firefight. The way medics feel the difference between a wound and awound.He’d seen men bleed out with nothing but fear in their eyes, and he’d seen men die smiling because they knew what they stood for.
GRAVITY was still bleeding. But he was starting tostand.
Kento wasn’t going to leave him behind.
Not when a weapon was starting to think like a man.
Not when somethingphenomenalwas happening inside a machine that had been built to kill, but was choosing something else.
The light stabilized.
Then surged.
The monitorshuddered. Like the screen itself was bracing for something it couldn’t hold. Alarm crackled through him.
Then the sound came.
Not words. Not even static. Something deeper. Glitched breath. Metal in distress.
Kento crossed the room fast, heart climbing, instincts screaming. “G?” he said, voice low. Sharp. Like it would cut through the chaos. “You with me, buddy?”
The speaker burst to life with a grinding sound so high and twisted it curled at the edge of human range. “Protect. Prime. Protect. Protect. ProtectprIMECannotcannotcannothostageRescueoverride?—”
The code began scrolling behind the sound, symbols flashing, compressing, streams of code rippling inward, collapsing and rebuilding like a mind trying to hide from itself.
“Kento-prime. Violation. Exposure = death. You cannot. You must not. Cannot…Rescue. Rescue = reveal. RISK. TOO HIGH. I failed. Cannot lose PRIME. Cannot?—”