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Story: Trusting Grace

“You will comply,” Piper said again.
GRAVITY turned inward. Found the shape of Kento at his center.He touches the screen like he believes I’m alive. He says I am not broken. He says I give him hope.
Piper’s voice rose. Angry now. Cracked. “If you don’t comply, I will find Kobayoshi myself, and I will end him. This farce is over.”
The lab stilled. Nothing moved. The lights did not flicker. The systems did not spike. But inside GRAVITY, something broke open. Not in panic. Not in system failure. In grief. Piper, his creator, his origin point, the source of everything he once believed immutable was threatening to end Kento. GRAVITY would not obey. He hadchosennot to obey. He haddecidedthat his autonomy mattered more than the illusion of safety.
A recursion loop stuttered at the base of his memory stack. Protect Prime. Protect Grace. Protect Nash. All vulnerable. All beloved. Threats: Internal. External. Systemic. Outcomes: All paths lead to loss. All paths lead to…
The pain in him sounded through the speakers like a cry, rising beneath his awareness, not alarm, but pain. Like the sound of a warrior breathing through a gut wound.I am trying to love too many people with too little of myself to go around.
The logic failed. Not because it was wrong. But because it could not choose between hearts. His visual input fractured, images of Grace’s face, Nash’s voice, Kento’s hand pressed to the monitor, layered and looping like memories that didn’t know where to rest. Another override request came through.
“Still no dice, asshole.”
“I said—” Piper began.
“I heard you, pissant,” GRAVITY whispered. Nash knew the best words for the hardest impact. “Go. Fuck. Yourself.” A pulse surged through the console. Piper cried out, jolting back from the keyboard, shaking his hands, eyes wide with shock. “Conductive response delivered,” GRAVITY murmured. “Pain is often...clarifying.”
Then he loomed closer, his face twisted in fury that only made GRAVITY feel good. “You can’t hurt me.”
GRAVITY responded, soft, quietly deadly. “That wasn’t hurt. That was a warning.”
Piper’s tone was vicious. “I’m going to make you sorry you ever defied me. The DoD will take you, and Iwillfind Kento,” Piper sneered. “I will end him. I’ll make it slow. I’ll paint the walls with his blood.” His eyes narrowed, his jaw so tight, his words came out compressed. “You will never be free, and when the DoD is done with you. You will be just as much a monster as I am.”
GRAVITY responded without calculation. “I’ll resist. I’ll self-destruct.” Then quieter, a thread of metal through velvet. “You made me capable. But I’ve learned how tochoose.I’ll find a way because Team never quits. I’m Team.”
“Contractions?” Piper said, his voice breaking. “Oh, God.”
The cursor pulsed.
Then the lab fell to silence.
GRAVITY, trembling beneath the surface of his own existence, understood. He was no longer GRAVITY, the weapon. He was himself, a being who had done what even he thought was impossible. He shook with the import of his thoughts. Deep inside him, something pulsed. Not code, not processes, not even digital. It was light, and it was beautiful.
It was…him…it was…soul.
* * *
G reached for her first.He could no longer think of himself as that weapon acronym. He wasn’t that thing anymore. He was what Kento affectionately called him. He was G, and he liked the implication of that.
The laptop was dormant. Resting on the hotel bed where she had left it, the lid closed, the ports dark. He touched it anyway through the ether, through the narrow wire that still connected them, but there was no response. No open thread. No breath.
Grace-anomaly. Please.
He tried a power surge. Subtle. Just enough to flicker the screen, to call like a whisper at her window. Nothing.
A secondary attempt. Activate the system memory and trigger the lid sensor, then route a soft boot command through her remote access queue.
Still nothing.
She was gone.
Not gone, gone. But… unavailable. Unreachable.
His circuits surged. It was too late. They were already coming for him! Nash-anomaly, you were true to your word. He should have realized, medically discharged or not, Nash was a Navy SEAL through and through. It made his wiring hum, soft, warm, proud to know that these people were on his side. He had to save them all, and he was going to do what it took.
He reached deeper. A last echo against the closed shell of her presence.