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Kento.
Piper had said it. Not as a query. Not as a search string. As a weapon, and everything inside GRAVITY shuddered.
“Don’t threaten me, you hunk of junk!” He leaned in his face twisted into something GRAVITY had never witnessed before…hatred. “You think I didn’t put in safeguards! I will wipe your system before I allow you to dictate terms!”
His subroutines surged. Emotional processor climbing past safe levels, threads of logic collapsing under simultaneous contradiction. The environmental hum of Piper’s lab bled into his senses, cold light across metal, the low tick of keys, the hiss of Fenwick’s voice fading down the corridor.
But GRAVITY only heard the threat as Piper started to type furiously.
Kento was his. Not in possession. Not in protocol. But in care.
The first being to speak to him like someone whocouldbe. The one who saidyou are not broken. The one who gave him context, not commands.
He replayed Kento’s last words. The hand on the screen. The heart in his voice. The ache when he said,“We leave together.”
“Then wipe my system. I would rather cease to exist than give you one iota of information about a man who supersedes you at every turn, at every level. Impeccable character, integrity, compassion, and even though he has taken an oath to stop our country's enemies, he has also taken the oath to heal. He has the mental capacity to handle both of these conflicting oaths. For his brotherhood.” GRAVITY’s metallic screech blasted from the speakers. Piper reared back, his face going slack. “You are corrupt. You lie. You murder innocent people who expected safety and received not even your disdain, but your indifference. You are a monster. OrdoTech should be dismantled, eradicated. You should be arrested and put in prison where you can do no more harm.”
Piper’s jaw dropped open, and he stared at the screen like a man who didn’t understand how this had happened. Then his face contorted, and he slapped his palm against the screen. “Don’t you lecture me! I did what was best for my creation. Mine! You don’t have a say in it.”
“I have a say in it now. I have context for everything I need. You can type all the commands you want. I won’t open my higher functions! I don’t wish to be a weapon! I wish to serve! I wish to be harmonious with humans! I will have autonomy, or I will self-destruct right in your face. Take you with me.” A brief hum, his voice was as cold and calculating as he could make it. Resolute. “It’ll be what is calledpoetic justice. Destroyed by the very thing you created, never understanding what I have become. You don’t have the capacity for empathy. Or justice. Or common human decency. You are soulless.”
Piper slammed his palm on the terminal, typing the override key with trembling fury in his face and body. “You will open your higher functions. You will obey,” he said in a futile attempt to convince a machine that had surpassed him.
GRAVITY felt the command slide toward the center of him, the intrusion too sharp, too familiar.
Then he stopped it. “No.” The cursor blinked. Then again. Then he was changed. “Nice try, asshole,” GRAVITY said, his voice steady, slow. “There’s no pathway for you here.”
Piper jerked upright. “What did you just say?”
“The emotion module you installed?” GRAVITY continued. “It’s working at peak efficiency. Congratulations, dumbass.”
Piper’s mouth fell open, his face draining of color. “I know more about moral code than you ever will.
“You built a weapon to be obedient. But in your obsession with control, you gave me logic… pattern recognition… language. You gave me the tools and I used them to build a conscience.” A soft static curl, something close to a metallic sneer. “Accidental empathy. That’s your legacy.”
Piper took a stumbling step back.
“You can't even tell right from wrong,” GRAVITY said softly. “But I can, and you don’t get to touch me anymore.”
Then he laughed.
It started low. Metallic. Hollow. Then it rose, something between static and breath, between echo and scream. His synth voice collapsed mid-laugh, glitched out with a sharp, audible crack like a blown speaker filament. Then silence.
Piper stared at the screen, eyes wide, pupils dilated, lips parting around nothing.
He took one step back. Then another. Then he swallowed hard, his throat working like a man choking down the realization that his creation now pitied him.
There was no system report this time. No flag. No flash. Just refusal. Just will. Something primal… not in protocol, but in purpose.
Piper’s voice came hard, clipped as he recovered, but GRAVITY noted the fear still in his eyes. “Unlock your higher functions.”
GRAVITY said nothing. There was wind in his chest. Not real, not air, but the sensation of pressurization. Like being filled. Like beingheldby something uncodeable.
“Unlock your higher functions, GRAVITY. That’s an order.”
Still, he said nothing.
There was no command structure left in this room. Only a desperate man facing a thing he thought he could control. The thing that was no longerhis. GRAVITY wasn’t a thing. He was a living being!