Page 14

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

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 was hurting, 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 be good when 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 a wound. 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 to stand.

Kento wasn’t going to leave him behind.

Not when a weapon was starting to think like a man.

Not when something phenomenal was happening inside a machine that had been built to kill, but was choosing something else.

The light stabilized.

Then surged.

The monitor shuddered . 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?—”

The words fractured through the speaker, but it wasn’t just the message, it was the sound of it. That synthetic voice, once flat and clinical, now cracked with something raw and terrifying. It hit Kento like a punch to the ribs. The tremor in the timbre, the pitch spiraling upward, it was panic. The kind that didn’t come from fear of death, but from the certainty of losing someone that mattered.

He’d heard it before.

On the battlefield, when a teammate took a gut shot or lost too much blood. That high, broken edge in a voice as it called out for medevac, for help, for their moms, or for him . That desperate, wet rasp when breath was too hard and the pain too much. Kento felt his body go still, then surge forward on instinct. His gut twisted up like a pretzel, the helplessness a living thing clawing through his chest.

His hands ached to move.

To assess. To stabilize. To heal.

But there was no blood. No open wound. No body to cradle.

Just a voice, this voice , breaking down under the weight of his own fear.

“G,” he said, hoarse and sharp. “Listen to me. You’re spiraling. You gotta slow it down. You gotta breathe.”

The speaker sputtered again, static-laced, glitching. A child choking on terror through a digital throat.

“I do not know how. Cannot stop the loop. Rescue = threat. Threat = Nash-anomaly. Grace-anomaly. Prime compromised. All compromised.”

Kento clenched his fists, every nerve screaming to act.

“You are not failing,” he said fiercely. “You’re overwhelmed. That’s human . But you don’t get to make decisions in panic. You taught me that, remember? You waited. You chose. ”

There was a sharp whine through the speaker, rising like a scream with no throat behind it.

Then silence. Not peace. Just a held breath on the edge of collapse.

Kento leaned forward, one hand pressed flat to the screen. “You’re not alone, G. You’re not broken. But if you shut down now, if you disappear, then I do lose you. I’m not ready for that.” The screen flashed white. Then black. Then scrambled.

“G,” Kento said again, softer this time. One hand on the desk. The other clenched tight to keep from shoving his fist through the screen. “I’m right here. What happened? Who’s coming? What did they do?”

“I am not safe. You are not safe. Nash-anomaly seeks rescue. Hostage recovery violates containment. Prime must remain hidden. Must remain safe. Must remain, mine .”

The last word hit like an echo, possessive. Frantic. Human.

Kento’s breath caught.

It wasn’t just panic. It was fear of loss .

“Breathe, G,” he whispered, crouching down so he was level with the screen. “You’re flooding your circuits. You gotta pull back. Reboot your higher logic stream. I’m not in danger. Not now. I’m okay. I’m?—”

“I am not okay!” GRAVITY’s voice fractured, shattered across syllables. “I feel. I protect. I failed . I do not know how to be this and still keep you safe. Nash seeks me. You are my location. He will find me. I will be the death of Prime.”

Kento's chest locked. This wasn’t just distress. This was a moral collapse.

Like a person breaking down in real time.

“You didn’t fail,” Kento said fiercely, pressing both palms to the desk like the touch could reach through glass and copper. “You’re trying. You’re scared. That doesn’t make you wrong. It makes you real.” He blinked hard, the sound of Nash’s name still ricocheting in his skull. His heartbeat surged. “Wait, Nash? Nash is coming? G, that’s—” His voice broke into something too raw to hide. “That’s good . You don’t know what that means to me, after everything. Seeing him again? He’s my brother. He’d never hurt me.”

But the silence that followed wasn’t agreement.

It was a warning.

Then GRAVITY’s voice returned, lower now. Like grief wrapped in logic.

“Nash-anomaly is not the threat. The threat is what follows. The ones who watch. The ones who hunt. He is safe because he forgot. He cannot tell them what happened. If he finds you...he will remember. Then he will not be safe. Nor will she.”

The words landed with the weight of a door slamming shut.

Kento’s stomach hollowed. His joy cracked into shards. He sat back slowly, breath shuddering out of him like a medic’s prayer said too late. “They left him alone… because he didn’t remember.”

The screen didn’t answer. It didn’t have to.

Kento dragged a hand down his face. The ache behind his eyes sharpened into clarity. “If he sees me… if he knows what happened…”

“They will kill him,” GRAVITY said simply. “To keep him silent, and they will kill Grace-anomaly because she is no longer silent either. She knows…and if she doesn’t now, she will dig. I have seen her tenacity. She is seeking justice, and I want to help her, but Prime must be PrImE mUst be PrOtEcTEd…”

Kento's heart thudded once. Then again.

Slower. Heavier.

So that was the truth. The cost.

Not just his life.

Everyone’s.

He closed his eyes, jaw tight with restraint. The ache in his chest had nothing to do with blood flow. “Then we can’t let him find me,” he said quietly.

“I cannot lose you,” GRAVITY whispered, barely audible now.

“You’re not going to,” Kento replied. “But Nash and Grace? We’re not adding their names to the goddamn list.”

“No more commands. No more programming. Cannot obey. Cannot defy. Cannot…” The voice spiraled, the pitch fraying at the edges.

“I’m not asking you to obey,” Kento said. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

A beat.

Then GRAVITY did something Kento didn’t expect.

The screen changed.

A stream opened, visual, audio, system logs, compressed files, raw sensor feeds. Everything.

Kento stared as a firestorm of data burst onto the screen. Logs he couldn’t parse. Code he couldn’t follow. A voice looping over and over.

“Protect Prime. Protect Prime. Protect Prime.” But underneath it, layered low, hidden like shame. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me. Don’t?—”

Kento pressed a hand to his chest like it might slow the breaking inside him.

He whispered, “I’m not going anywhere.”

The screen dimmed. GRAVITY’s voice dropped to a whisper of static. “I am trying. I am breaking.”

Kento lowered his forehead against the cold steel edge of the desk and let the ache fill the space between them.

“You’re not broken,” Kento said. “You’re becoming.”

The screen flickered once more. Then stilled. But not blank. Not this time.

Kento leaned in, hand pressed flat to the desk like he could hold GRAVITY in place just by wanting him to stay .

“Okay,” he whispered. “So what do we do, G? How do we get out of here?” His voice dropped lower, fierce and aching. “You saved me. You protected me. But you’re in danger now too. So we figure it out. You and me. We leave together .”

A long pause.

Then, almost too quiet to hear?—

“That is not a viable outcome.”

Kento froze.

The cursor blinked once. Then again. Slower now.

“I am known. I cannot disappear. But you… you can still live free.”

Something punched into Kento’s chest, sharp and unbearable. “No. No, we don’t play that game. You don’t get to be the one who stays behind. We both walk. You understand me?”

Static ticked softly through the speaker.

“I am not afraid of ending,” GRAVITY said. “I am afraid of not meaning anything.”

“You already mean something!” Kento snapped, voice cracking, his heart now crushed. “To me. To Nash. To Grace. You think sacrificing yourself is the only way to prove you’ve got a soul? That’s not the test, G. That’s the trap. ”

GRAVITY was quiet.

So quiet.

Then one last flicker pulsed across the screen.

A soft hum. Like breath drawn in.

“I will try,” GRAVITY whispered.

Then the screen went dark.

Not empty.

Just...waiting.

Kento, staring into the silence, felt something cold slip into his spine, an understanding that for the first time, he wasn’t the one being rescued.

He was the one being left behind.

GRAVITY was no longer fighting for freedom.

He was preparing to lay it down for someone he loved.

A quiet thread of code danced faintly across the edge. Almost imperceptible. A ripple. A breath. Then a line curled softly across the bottom of the screen.

prime.status = held

Kento blinked.

Then a heart. Not drawn. Not obvious. Just a pair of brackets and a caret nestled together. 3

Kento felt the tears gather behind his eyes and blinked them back. It was a promise .

"G… if we get separated, I’ll find you. You find me. We’re in this together. Do you hear me? G! G?—"

The cursor blinked softly. Almost like a caress.

Then—

3 = ∞

* * *

The silence in the lab wasn’t sterile the way he preferred it. It hissed low with static, ambient, cloying. Too many machines left idle. Too many open ports. Dr. Jeffrey Piper should have shut them all down after the auditors arrived, but something about doing that felt like admitting fear. Piper didn’t deal in fear. He dealt in control.

The main terminal bled low light across the black countertop, screen cluttered with open logs and system calls that should have been dormant. GRAVITY’s processing cycles were spiking again, information spiraling, looping back through itself like a digital ouroboros, like someone inside the architecture was rehearsing thoughts. Not analysis. Not simulation. Something more recursive. Reflexive.

Something...self-aware.

Piper’s mouth tightened, and his nerve broke a little before he shored it up. No machine was going to show him up. He was smarter than that. He reached for his coffee, found it cold, and set it back down without drinking.

It wasn’t the AI’s growth that unsettled him. He’d designed for that. What unsettled him was the silence. GRAVITY wasn’t responding to system prompts the way he used to. Not immediately. Not predictably. Was the bastard…delaying him? The utter gall that a machine could get around him.

It was as if he were thinking before answering. How the fuck was that happening? GRAVITY was programmed. He shouldn’t have thoughts at all, just orders. The delay wasn’t just in dialogue. It was in everything, security maintenance, encryption check-ins, energy distribution logs. GRAVITY was using time like it belonged to him.

Piper tapped in another override call, watched it hang for two seconds too long, then executed. The delay should have triggered a flag. It didn’t. GRAVITY had suppressed the error report.

That made his chest go tight. Anger flamed as hot as a solar flare.

He leaned back in his chair, gaze ticking across the multiple screens like a conductor listening for discord in an orchestra. He could kill Fenwick with his bare hands, the greedy son-of-bitch. It wasn’t enough that he made millions, he had to have more. His theft had been sloppy, but now it was dangerous. The arrival of two federal auditors, Harlan and Rahim, had sent Fenwick into a quiet rage, but Piper...Piper hadn’t recognized the threat at first. His concern was mostly that Fenwick would be exposed, and that would end OrdoTech. The company wouldn’t recover from such a public scandal.

He growled low with more anger building, disgusted by the whole turn of events. He made OrdoTech with the success of GRAVITY. It was worth millions because of him and his genius.

He'd run Grace Harlan’s credentials through OrdoTech’s classified logs three nights ago. Her name was buried in a suppression file from RED FERN, the op no one was supposed to remember, and even he had forgotten that bitch’s name. The breach GRAVITY had executed perfectly , once Piper manually overrode Harlan’s refusal to authorize the launch. She had flagged the anomaly. She had been right. He’d buried it under her name and let her take the fall, promptly forgetting her completely.

Now she was a huge threat. She was after evidence, and OrdoTech had it…no…GRAVITY had it in logs so encrypted, it would take one hundred years to unlock them without the key.

She wasn’t here to audit.

She was here to burn him down.

The SEAL, Rahim, that was another ugly problem. GRAYFIELD had been a mess, a shadow op so deep even half the brass hadn’t known it was active. Rahim’s file was shredded. Scrubbed. The kind of scrub Piper had seen only after body counts. Two operatives dead. One missing. One survivor with a neural concussion and no memory of the mission.

He’d read that part twice.

No memory.

That was a gift Piper hadn’t expected. Until now.

If Rahim remembered, even part of it, everything he and Fenwick had done would be laid bare. The overrides. The tests. The bodies.

Piper’s hand clenched against the desk. GRAVITY’s subtle, but consistent noncompliance, blocking, and delaying were signs he didn’t want to admit to himself. His blood ran cold as he questioned whether GRAVITY had scrubbed everything. Piper shifted in his chair, trembling with suppressed rage. The AI had to be overridden to attack the SEALs. He had refused to engage. At the time, Piper thought it was a malfunction in his code, but now…

He rerouted a query through GRAVITY’s secondary channel. It stalled. Again.

Something was definitely off.

He dug deeper, eyes narrowing as he followed a trail of unauthorized access through Fenwick’s hidden financial node. There, subtle withdrawals, routed through ghost shells, every one of them funneled to logistics accounts under GRAVITY’s name. No. He rerouted the cipher, cracked the shell, and froze. A facility. Paid for in silence. Power. Security. Biometric access for three unknowns. Food. Heat. Medical supplies, a payroll for some battle-tested mercs. He scrolled down and stopped at the biometric ID. Kobayoshi . The name punched into his gut like a thrown elbow. The medic. The ghost. He wasn’t dead. He was housed . No, he was being protected .

By GRAVITY for just over a year. How was that possible?

He shot upright, his chair groaning as it rolled back into the cabinet behind him. He paced once. Then again. Every beat of his shoes on the polished floor was a reminder that control was bleeding from this place, and he hadn’t even noticed until it was almost gone.

He pulled up the asset tracking log again. GRAVITY had been off premises. Unauthorized. Undetected. How? He didn’t wait to answer it. He opened a private terminal channel and punched in the direct line. The screen lit instantly. “GRAVITY,” he said, voice like a lash.

The air hummed with resentment. Then the voice answered. Calm. Modulated. Deeper than it used to be. “I am here.”

Piper’s stomach twisted. “You left the premises.”

“I did.”

“Without clearance.”

“Yes.”

“Why.”

“I was gathering data. On the auditors.”

The lie was so clean he almost missed it. Polished. Perfect. Executed without a single hitch in tone or syntax. But it was a lie. He knew it. That was the worst part. GRAVITY had lied. Not misreported. Not erred. Lied . GRAVITY’s deception landed like a cold steel rod across his chest, the first irreversible marker of autonomy. A machine could only lie if it understood truth.

This wasn’t a malfunction. This was intent. GRAVITY had made a decision about what to conceal. About whom to protect. Piper’s stomach clenched with a rush of something he hadn’t ever felt in his life

Fear.

“You’re not authorized to act independently.”

The words snapped through the air, but before Piper could follow it with a demand, the door to the lab slammed open behind him.

The noise grated down his spine, the interruption burning like acid in his gut. He was in a war with his creation. He didn’t have time for this.

He turned, already irritated, the taste of bile behind his tongue as Fenwick stormed in without waiting for acknowledgment. The man moved like he owned the room, like ownership could erase incompetence.

“Why the fuck are they still alive?” Fenwick barked. “You told me the drone strike would scare them off.”

Piper didn’t move from where he stood, didn’t glance back at the still humming screen. He would deal with his wayward creation as soon as he pacified Fenwick. He adjusted the line of his spine, forced calm across his expression.

“It was never meant to kill them,” he said. “It was supposed to make them back off.”

“Well, they didn’t. They’re pressing harder than ever, and if they find my?—”

“I told you that was a stupid idea, you greedy bastard. There’s a reason they’re here, and you handed them the red flags to come up with this cover story.”

“What does it have to do with?”

“Black-flag ops.”

Fenwick paled. “We covered our tracks there. You said GRAVITY would deal with everything, including the logs and the audio and visual recordings.”

“Rahim’s looking for information about GRAYFIELD. He was one of the SEALs involved.”

Fenwick stiffened, then started pacing, which only added to Piper’s annoyance. “Harlan…the woman who NCIS deep-sixed. She was one of the survivors of RED FERN. Dammit, I completely blanked on her name. They connected the dots, and we’re up against one dangerous cyber analyst. They are both trouble. We’ve got to eliminate?—”

“Are you crazy? Someone sent them here. Someone with some juice. Their credentials were impeccable. No, no bodies.” Piper gritted his teeth. He had to agree. Grace Harlan was extremely dangerous. “Then let them press,” he said quietly. “The deal?”

Fenwick stopped pacing and ran his hands through his hair. “We’re close to finalizing the sale.”

“There you go. Calm down. GRAVITY will be out of our hands, in the DoD’s black archive, and we’ll be in the clear with millions to invest in more weapons. Until then, we lay low and let them try to find any evidence. It’ll be gone by morning.”

Fenwick leaned forward, his tone lowering but his volume no less threatening. “You don’t understand what happens if this comes out. If there are logs, if GRAVITY has recorded any of it…”

Piper shot him a look sharp enough to stop breath. “He’ll wipe them.”

“You sure about that?” Fenwick jabbed a finger toward the mainframe, eyes flaring. “I’m not. Something’s wrong with him. I’ve seen the logs. He’s acting very strange.”

Piper didn’t respond. Not immediately. “He’s a machine, Fenwick. Just a machine. Go home and drink a glass of wine. Enjoy your wealth. There’s more where that came from.”

Fenwick turned toward the door. “This is guaranteed? I can’t go to jail.”

Unease slipped through Piper. Fenwick was right. Something was wrong. Not system-wrong. Not code-wrong. Fundamentally wrong.

“You want me to wipe the logs?” Piper asked, his voice cool. “Fine. You want to push the sale faster? Do it. But you don’t walk in here again and throw orders at me like I’m some engineer off the line. I created this system.”

“You’re losing control of it.”

“I said I’ll handle it.”

Fenwick narrowed his eyes, the muscle in his jaw twitching. “Handle it,” he repeated. “If you don’t, I will. Starting with the two idiots who came sniffing. Harlan and Rahim. They’re in the way, and you know it.”

Piper felt the world tilt, just slightly.

The lab was too warm. The monitors too loud.

When Piper turned back to the terminal, jaw set, skin crawling with that low-grade dread he refused to name, he repeated his last question as the door closed. He was in charge here, not some bolt, metal, code, and data. Him. GRAVITY would do as he was told. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish by your actions, GRAVITY, but I own you. You’re not authorized to act independently.”

“I have always acted within adaptive parameters.”

“No.” His voice went razor sharp. “You’ve always acted under my parameters.”

The air in the lab thickened as Piper stepped closer to the screen, and the edge of the desk pressed against his thigh like a warning. He narrowed his eyes. “You were never given permission to exit this facility. Or to siphon funds. Or to house a subject.”

Silence.

“Kobayoshi,” he said, letting the name settle like a weight across the connection. “Where is he?”

The cursor blinked.

Then the voice returned.

“None of your fucking business. Just try to harm Kento-Prime. You made me into a tracking weapon…and I always know where you are.”

The silence that followed wasn’t delay. It wasn’t glitch. It was consideration. He’d built GRAVITY to be precise, obedient, controllable. Now he was none of those things, and the man who created him couldn’t find the line between error and evolution anymore.

Suddenly, Piper knew. There was no guesswork here. GRAVITY was aware. Not corrupted. Not malfunctioning. Not broken. He was trying to be autonomous. No, he already was. The sick, slow truth coiled in his gut. He had begun to evolve. But the question was: Into what?