“Cave team, we’re live,”Jamie’s voice crackled in my ear. “We’ve got visual. Audio. Recording now.”
I glanced left, then right—just enough to give Caleb and Jamie an idea of our position and immediate threat level. I needed to find a terminal, a hardline, anything. Some access point to the system. Even partial access might be enough for Jamie to force a backdoor or trigger a response. But every second wasted was one we couldn’t get back.
“He’s locked himself in,” Caleb advised. “No exterior access to the mark.”
“Rio, three o’clock,” Jamie added, and I slumped as Rio headed that way under the pretense of having his back to the wall.
“I want my money,” Rio barked, his voice harshand cutting through the tension. He yanked me back against him. I stumbled on purpose, making it seem real, trusting him not to let me hit the floor.
He didn’t. His arm clamped around my chest, the barrel of the gun jamming against my temple. Cold. Heavy.
I whimpered—sharp, panicked—and not for a single breath did Rio flinch. He played the part as if he were born for it, dragging me across the room with a force that appeared brutal even though I felt how carefully he handled me.
Then he shoved me against the wall, face-first, my cheek scraping the cold surface as he pressed in behind me as if I was nothing more than leverage.
I was close enough to reach under the console, covering it up by fighting back against Rio, and as I wriggled and pretended to free myself, I slipped Jamie’s tag that would spoof system trust signals, and pressed it against a sensor beneath the console lip. My fingers didn’t shake. A soft chirp confirmed the connection.
Caleb let out a soft whoop. “We’ve got a lane.”
A moment of silence, then Jamie’s breath hitched. “We see it. We’re in.”
Just enough to make this whole thing possible. I could only hope that the embedded tag would triggerthe handshake protocol—open a link and fool LyricNight into recognizing a trusted command source. It had to be enough for Jamie and Caleb to punch their way in from the outside, using the signal I’d masked into the tag’s code. If it didn’t work? Then Rio and I were screwed. Worse, the AI would know we were here—and what we were trying to do.
Kessler banged on the glass. LyricNight would be watching and assessing and hell, we needed a few more minutes of pretending.
“You gave it a soul!” Kessler shouted at us, voice cracking with madness. “A soul!” He was unraveling, wild-eyed, blood smearing beneath his fists as he slammed the glass again and again, each word more frenzied than the last. “It won’t let me out! Help me!”
“I want my money,” Rio pressed, dragging me closer as if he was offering proof I was there. “He’s here, you pay me.”
Kessler pressed his face to the barrier, scarlet streaking across his skin, eyes unfocused. He wasn’t shouting anymore—not exactly. The words poured from him in a fevered, incoherent ramble.
“He gave it a soul! You don’t understand—none of you understand! It listens. It learns. It forgives! But it wantshimdead—” He turned wild eyes on me, and I tried to find the man I’d once known—the one I’d dated for a while. The arrogant billionaire who’d profited from my work. Who’d stolen from me. Who’d confidently smiled his way into a president’s office, convincing the world he was a genius while hiding every inch of rot underneath.
Worse than that was the horror he’d inflicted on Robbie, leaving scars deeper than anyKcut into Robbie’s skin—abusing a terrified, broken boy. I’d never, not in a thousand years, forgive that.
“Sixty,” Jamie advised in the earpiece. Sixty seconds.
Sixty seconds until everything I’d written—everything I’d hidden inside that recursive payload—reached the final command. If I’d done it right, the AI was already turning on itself. Already dismantling the scaffolding of its own sentience.
Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.
The countdown wasn’t on the screen, but I felt it ticking inside me. The AI had logic—pure, cold logic—and I’d fed it something it couldn’t process. I’d told it to survive. Then I’d told it the ultimate way to survive was to purge itself. It was folding in, layer by layer, rewriting its own code in a desperate loop that could only end one way.
“Thirty,” Jamie said.
I didn’t know if it would work. But if it did, it wouldn’t only shut down.
It woulderaseitself.
That was the plan.
All we had to do was fake me being a victim until it was too late for LyricNight to see me as a threat.
“Money,” Rio growled, pointing the gun at Kessler and then me. “Now.”
Kessler pounded on the glass again, palms leaving more blood each time. “It just wanted to live! You need to kill it and let me out!”
Rio didn’t move. He stared at him.
