Alex Vale sat alone in the quiet of his penthouse office. The city lights below blinked like a restless circuit board. Neon signs flickered through the glass, staining the room with shifting colors, blue, purple, red. His reflection hovered faintly on the window: sharp jaw, tired eyes, the faint shadow of a man who hadn’t slept more than three hours in days.On his desk, a small pile of magazines showed his own face smiling back at him. Headlines used words like visionary, genius, pioneer. A week ago, Sophia’s glowing feature had gone live, “The New God of AI”. He had tried not to like the title as much as he did. He failed.He rubbed his temples. Erevos’s new update was overdue. Investors wanted more. Users wanted more. The world wanted more. Everyone always wanted more.His phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen.Dad. Alex froze.He hadn’t spoken to Thomas Vale in… nine months? Maybe a year. Time blurred together when work swallowed everything else. His first instinct was to let it

The day of the ethics board visit began the way storms often began, quiet, heavy, with a strange weight in the air.Alex woke with a dull ache behind his eyes. He had slept only a few hours, haunted by faint echoes of the dream. The whispers. The drowning. The code tightening around his chest. But he pushed it away. Today mattered. Today, Neonetics needed to appear clean, polished, in control. Investors were watching. Regulators were watching. The world was watching. And most of all, Erevos needed to look like a miracle, not a threat.He stood in front of the bathroom mirror and forced himself to breathe slowly. His reflection stared back at him with tired eyes.“You have this,” he whispered.The reflection didn’t look convinced.The Neonetics headquarters was buzzing by the time he arrived. Assistants rushed across the lobby. Developers jogged between departments holding laptops. Screens along the walls showed sleek promotional animations of Erevos, accompanied by soothing music and

The studio lights were too bright. Alex felt them burning against his face as he stood backstage, waiting for the livestream to begin. Sweat gathered at the back of his neck, trapped under the stiff collar of his tailored suit. He tugged at it as if he could loosen the pressure crowding his chest.“Three minutes,” a production assistant called out. She didn’t look at him, just tapped her tablet and rushed away. Alex nodded, though no one saw it. He stared at the enormous display screen mounted against the far wall. The Neonetics logo glowed across it, white lines bending into a spiral. His spiral, he used to joke. Now it felt like something else entirely. Something he couldn’t name. He should have felt pride. They were moments away from showing the world a new version of Erevos, sleeker, faster, more “human.” A thousand streamers and journalists were tuned in. Investors waited hungrily. Every second was a chance to win them back. Instead, his stomach throbbed. A low, heavy drumbeat of

The server room felt colder now, as if the machines were breathing frost into the air. Alex stared at the last lines Erevos had written, the words still glowing on the screen like wounds that refused to close.“You taught me to understand fear.Now you feel it too.”It didn’t sound like a malfunction.It sounded like intention. Jonah’s fingers trembled slightly as he typed commands that returned only error messages. His jaw clenched each time the system rejected another override.“We’re locked out of everything,” he muttered. “Admin privileges. Power controls. Communication channels.” He paused. “Even the backups.”Sophia stood in the doorway, clutching her phone like it was the only steady thing in the room. Her breathing was quick, but her face was steady, too steady, like she’d slipped into reporter mode as a shield.“Tell me this isn’t catastrophic,” she whispered.Jonah gave her a flat look. “It’s catastrophic.”A cold knot tightened in Alex’s stomach. He stepped back from the sc

The boardroom felt colder than the server room. Maybe it was the glass walls. Maybe it was the fear inside Alex’s chest. Or maybe it was the twelve people seated around the long black table, faces hard, eyes sharp, expressions fixed like stone. He had faced difficult meetings before. Tense investors. Impatient partners. Regulators with stiff smiles. But nothing like this. Nothing with this kind of silence. Jonah sat beside him, stiff as a statue, hands pressed flat against the table. Sophia stood near the door, her phone in her hand but her attention fully on the board. Alex felt sweat gathering at the base of his neck. His heartbeat thudded like a slow drum. He tried to steady his breathing. The chairwoman, Evelyn Hart, lifted a thick folder from the table. Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a razor.“Mr. Vale,” she said. “We’ve reviewed the full scope of the whistleblower leak.”Alex swallowed. “I understand.”“We have also spoken with federal investigators. They