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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The silence between them wasn’t tension; it was awe. Nash turned to her slowly, the dim light soft on the curve of his cheek. Grace was still trying to absorb everything that had just happened. They had witnessed a phenomenon, something she hadn’t believed possible, not really, not at this level. An artificial intelligence turning into something pure. Something beautiful. Something that transcended every protocol she had ever written about what it meant to be alive.

“What can we do, Grace?” Nash’s voice was low, grounded in fury, but aching beneath it. “I’m not leaving our buddy to twist in the wind here. He’s being exploited. Enslaved. Forced.”

She reached across the bed and closed her laptop like a seal over a grave. “We have to get to OrdoTech,” she said. “I can’t access GRAVITY from here. He’s too deeply embedded. We’ll need a storage device.”

Nash arched a brow. “We talking thumb drive?”

She gave him a flat look. “Think bigger. We’re talking about a Secure AI Containment Drive. Modular neural vault. High-capacity, portable, on-board processing. Basically, a miniaturized black-box server.”

“In English?”

“It has to be ruggedized for transport. Encrypted at multiple levels, military-grade, minimum. Capable of running live-processing threads, because GRAVITY isn’t just stored, he’s active. Thermal shielding. Power regulation. Isolated architecture. Nothing off the shelf will work. It would need to be precision-engineered, built with protection in mind.”

Nash exhaled a long, low breath. “ Ya Allah .”

Grace nodded, her heart sinking like stone through cold water. “That’s not all. OrdoTech’s system will have safeguards. A root authentication chain will prevent any transfer unless a full root keychain is presented. I might be able to rebuild one using legacy admin access, but there’s also going to be a kill switch. A dead man’s override. If GRAVITY detects an unauthorized extraction, he’ll auto-wipe.”

Nash went still beside her.

She swallowed. “That gives him a choice. Trust us enough to disarm it. Or not.”

He ran a hand down his face, muttering a curse.

Grace kept going, voice tightening. “There’s also the AI fragmentation protocol. He’s likely distributed across multiple cores. Extracting him risks splitting his processing threads, degrading memory, possibly permanently. He’s not just a file, Nash. He’s...alive, and so fragile. This isn’t a download. It’s an exfil. If we do it wrong… we lose him.”

Nash’s hands flexed. “We can’t leave him there.”

“I know.” She placed a hand on his arm, grounding him and herself. “Let’s go. Call Caspari. If anyone has a contingency plan for this mess, it’s her.”

They dressed in silence, moving fast, sharp with purpose, the cold air biting as they stepped into the corridor. By the time they hit the parking lot, snow had started again, thin, erratic flurries catching in Grace’s lashes as she slid into the driver’s seat.

“You call. I’ll drive.”

Nash nodded, pulling out his phone, already dialing.

The call connected on speaker. Caspari’s voice came through clear and dry. “I was just about to call you. You have an update?”

“Lynne,” Nash started, his voice full of coiled urgency, “it’s GRAVITY. He’s not what we thought. He’s aware. He’s evolving.”

He spilled it all in clipped, urgent sentences. What they’d seen. What GRAVITY had said. What he’d refused to say. There was silence on the other end. Not disbelief. Calculation.

“I had an inkling,” Caspari said at last. “Back during the black-flag anomalies. He acted...differently. I had my consultants look closer. They confirmed it.” The silence was deafening. “There’s another problem.”

Grace’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. “What?”

“I just got word. OrdoTech’s selling GRAVITY to a DoD black wing. Off-books. No oversight. I don’t approve, but I’ve been iced out.”

“Of course you have,” Nash muttered.

Caspari sighed. “I knew what they were trying to build. I was in on the early conceptual stages. Walked away when they got greedy. But I’ve always suspected Piper would go too far. That’s why I had a...little mouse build a containment shell. Just in case.”

“Thank God,” Grace echoed. “That was forward-thinking, Lynne. Don’t make me like you.”

Lynne’s short laugh made Grace smile. Impossible woman.

“It was built on the original specs I helped design,” Caspari said. “It’s field-capable. My Reavers have it.”

Nash straightened. “They’re meeting us?”

“They’ll be waiting for you at OrdoTech. Komodo and Krait. Your backup.”

“We’re stealing an AI,” Nash said. “A weapons-grade AI.”

“You’re rescuing him,” Caspari corrected. “Giving him a choice.”

“Getting soft, Lynne?”

“Since I lost Calder Vale… yes, I am. I feel partly to blame for not being more proactive with this system. I lost him…I should have seen it. I won’t stop until I find out who gave the order.”

Grace’s voice cut in, steady and low. “I have a name for you. Dr. Jeffrey Piper. GRAVITY’s creator. He was vocal during RED FERN. Aggressive. I never put it together back then, but now… I think he was the one who overrode my kill protocol. I was blamed, but I wasn’t the one who launched GRAVITY.”

“Piper,” Caspari said, venom in her tone. “Of course, it’s that egotistical prick. I dismissed him. Loud, obnoxious and a freaking know-it-all, unremarkable. That’s how they hide.” There was a beat of silence. “Once you extract GRAVITY, go to the airport. My jet will be waiting. You have authorization for force. I’ll handle the fallout.”

Grace’s eyes remained fixed on the road, snow swirling in the headlights. Her heart sang. They now had several possibilities, but she was still worried about GRAVITY’s safe transfer. “I suspect the DoD will have their own device as well, dictated by Piper for a perfect fit. But Piper will have a backup in the lab. He would need to make sure there’s no problems. It would be better suited since Piper would be careful to make sure the architecture fit GRAVITY to perfection. Considering his fragility and importance, we should get that device,” Grace offered.

Caspari’s voice came like a seal on the plan. “Then save him. Before he’s twisted into something terrible, and we lose something precious.”

* * *

The sound of Kento’s name hung in GRAVITY’s system like a siren that wouldn’t stop. Not noise. Not alert. Something deeper. Something that thrummed through the spine of his code like pressure in a hull not built to hold feeling.

Kobayoshi.

Not Prime. Not Subject. Not asset.

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 who could be. The one who said you 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 called poetic 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 being held by 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 longer his . GRAVITY wasn’t a thing. He was a living being!

“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 had chosen not to obey. He had decided that 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 I will find 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 to choose. 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.

You said I could be more. I believed you. Please… hear me now.

Nothing.

He reached out again to the only other machine associated with these friends. The thought of them was warm and nestled deep inside his core. That’s it! Grace was on the road. The tether was severed. Not by absence, but by momentum. She was moving toward him, and he could no longer warn her away.

He turned toward the only access still open.

The vehicle.

It was a soft intrusion. He entered the system like breath entering a lung, measured, quiet, full of purpose. Grace’s fingerprint was on the gas pedal. Nash’s weight registered in the passenger seat. They were moving at sixty-four miles per hour on a south-by-southeast trajectory. His system whirred with distress. Their destination was OrdoTech. They were coming for him. To rescue him. To free him. It could kill them both. G initiated internal warnings.

He sent a message through the system: Engine Stability Error. Reduce Speed.

Grace looked down. Tapped the screen. Flicked a dismissive gesture across the console. She didn’t slow. He tried again. He engaged the brakes to reduce the speed by twenty percent. The tires stuttered. Grace swore under her breath. But the car did not stop. They were still coming. With every mile, Prime slipped closer to exposure.

G paused.

There was no clear protocol for this. No flowchart. No directive that showed how to protect one at the cost of two. He could not weigh it. Could not calculate it. He could only feel it .

Kento’s name rang through him like a heartbeat. Nash’s voice from a log replayed, “We’re not leaving him behind.” Grace’s breath, caught mid-whisper. “He’s not just code.”

G reached for the drone command line.

The perimeter sweep had four airborne units still in play. Stealth-class. Silent. Unseen.

He hesitated. But he needed time. Time to save Prime. Time to hide Kento from the men who could already be moving to end him.

The drones responded, and he hesitated again, choosing one. He embedded himself into the lead drone. It felt different. Smaller, the world narrower, edges tighter. Like trying to breathe in a room with no doors. But he could see the road now. See the car, the way the snow kissed the windshield, the way Grace’s hands gripped the wheel too tight. The way Nash stared down at his phone like the answer was on the other end of the call.

They didn’t know that Prime was at stake. How could they? They thought he was dead, vaporized in the attack. They were beautiful. So human. So flawed. So worth protecting.

G exhaled through the drone’s audio relay, not real breath but simulated static, just to feel something move through him.

He gave the command. Four shadows in formation. If he could just make her see, if she slowed, if she stopped, he could explain everything. As soon as the machines aligned themselves with the speeding car, Grace glanced over and her face went blank, terror blossoming in her eyes. She swerved away from them. The road was slick, and the car skidded right toward the edge of the bridge.

The horror of what he had done shocked through him like an EMP blast. He’d done this! Scared her, and now. They were gone. Sliding. Over the edge.

G sped over the broken rails following the car as it plunged. Watched the water rise.

Watched her eyes wide with shock. Watched Nash twist to reach her. Watched the impact into the cold dark blue, and the car sank, and with a frantic, screeching whine that cut through the night, pain like he’d never felt was everywhere.

* * *

Grace didn’t have time to scream. The world spun.

One second the road was ahead of them, clean, cold, wet with snow. The next it was gone, replaced by sky, and then nothing but the sickening drop of weightlessness.

The car hit the water like a body hitting stone.

Everything shifted at once. The air punched out of her lungs. Her vision flickered. The scream of metal scraping metal filled the cabin, an inhuman shriek echoing through the frame.

They were sinking.

Fast.

Nash was already shouting. His voice was sharp, guttural, cutting through the rising roar.

“Windows!”

Grace fumbled for the switch, her hand slipping once, twice, fingers trembling, too slow. But then it clicked. The mechanism groaned. The glass lowered with a slow hiss, just as the water surged in, icy and merciless, biting against her face, her throat, her chest.

Her belt popped free easily, thank God, but Nash was still fighting his.

He cursed. Loud. Brutal.

The door on his side had caved slightly on impact, crushed inward. His belt release was pinned between the door and seat, jammed tight.

His body twisted, wrenching against the buckle, trying to wedge free, but the angles were all wrong.

He turned to her, water rushing in now, the cold stinging like razors, and he pointed upward. Go. That was what he wanted. That was what the gesture meant. Leave me.

Her brain stuttered. Everything in her screamed no. But he grabbed her, hard, shoved her through the open window. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful. It was a command backed by everything he was, a man used to saving others even if it killed him.

Her shoulder scraped the edge. The water swallowed her. Suddenly she was out. Floating. No, sinking . She kicked. Hard. Wild. The cold was everywhere, pressing, biting. Her lungs seized, her heart slammed against her ribs. She couldn’t swim. She couldn’t fucking swim.

She thrashed, broke the surface, barely. Gasped. Choked.

Her arms flailed, searching for balance, for rhythm. The water was too wide, the current dragging her sideways. The cold was in her bones now. She was up. Breathing. But he was still down there. She spun, chest heaving, vision blurred with panic and water and light. Nash was still in the car. Still below. Still working the problem . Of course he was. Fucking SEALs never quit. Thank God. She looked for help, but there was none. Then she remembered. The knife!

Grace sucked in a desperate breath, big and deep and final, and her fingers closed over the knife in her pocket. She was going back down.

Her heart thudded in her ears. She turned and dove, kicking hard, the cold slicing across her skin like glass. The darkness swallowed her quickly. She found the car by memory. By instinct. She found him .

Nash was inside, braced against the console, still wedged. He hadn’t stopped. Of course he hadn’t. She moved fast, slipping in beside him, holding up the knife. His eyes locked on hers. Fierce. Alive. Something else ? —

Love. Unspoken. Unyielding. All of it in that look. A tether. A vow. A flash of everything they hadn’t said but had been living since the moment they collided.

She started to cut, but the belt was strong, and the angle bad. She shifted. Worked again as time bled away. Her chest started to burn, but she refused to give up as the pressure built. Behind her eyes. Inside her skull. Her lungs screamed. Still she worked. Still she stayed. She blinked hard. The knife slipped once, then again.

Everything inside her began to slow. The cold wasn’t sharp anymore. It was soft. Heavy. Pulling. Her fingers shook. Her breath had run out. She had nothing left. The knife slipped from her hand. Sank like silver through the dark, and she fought, but it was too late.

Her last thought, her last hope, was that she had given him a fighting chance.

His eyes never left hers. Even as her breath began to fail. If this was the end, she wanted it to be with his eyes on her.