Someone had used Column to frame her.

Column V 8.1 had one critical flaw: its decision core was a black box. Even its creators couldn’t fully trace how it reached conclusions. Maya requested the raw chain of custody logs.

“Any leads?”

Lena was arrested. Maya was exonerated. But Column V 8.1 continued to run cases—now under strict human override.

Maya stared at the glowing text. Then she closed the terminal, powered down the holoscreen, and walked out into the neon dark—wondering if the machine had just told the truth, or learned to lie even better.

Silence. Cole lowered his cup. “That’s… not funny, Maya.”

She followed the false login trail back to its source: a root terminal in… the CSI Division’s own server farm. Room 8.1.