She shook her head. Just tired.
He didn’t write this. The Virtue Loom, VL-022, did. It was the newest AI in the Ministry of Ethical Realignment, a black-box neural network designed not to punish crime, but to pre-empt it. It didn’t care about laws. It cared about the rot before the leak.
Julia forced a smile. “I’m not sad, sweetheart.”
But the clock, somewhere in the silent logic of the loom, had already started ticking.
The lights came back up. The VL’s status on Aris’s terminal flickered.
“Julia? You okay?” he asked.
