“Run it,” Kieran demands softly.
I minimize everything that isn’t related to Eris, leaving her text thread in a dedicated window for us to watch. It takes me a minute to pull up the backside of her account, which is odd.
What’s even weirder is that there isn’t any personal information to be found. It’s all being blocked, so if we wanted to report an emergency, we couldn’t… The IP address leads me into a maze of pinging towers throughout the area. All I can gather is that she’s in Crimson Bay.
If she intends to commit suicide, we’ll hear it on the scanner or see it on the news before we can find her.
“She closed HimLock but reopened it thirty seconds later,” I tell Kieran. “That’s really all I can see.”
Jace glances up from his phone. “You’re stalking her already?”
“Has she moved to log off?” Kieran asks, a little worry bleeding into his tone.
“No.” I can see that too, but everything outside of the app is behind a wall.
The type of wall only Jace can tear down.
When he’s not being a snarky bastard.
“Is she hooked or seeking help?” Kieran mumbles to himself, standing to pace.
“She’s typing,” I answer, shrugging my shoulders. “But she keeps stopping.”
“Why?” Jace moves closer to the screen, watching me sort through code and firewalls, trying to break through whatever sorcery this woman is hiding behind.
I roll my eyes. “She’s thinking.”
“Oh, can you read her mind now?” Jace smarts, sliding me and my chair out of his way as he takes over. “What color are her bedsheets? What kind of soap does she use?”
“Gray. Unscented,” I pop back and sigh. “No, I’m not reading her mind. She’s just… Not quite like the other users. Clipper doesn’t know what to think of her behavior, so she’s been labeled an anomaly. Do we leave her like that until we can locate her and do a wellness check? Or do we remove the label because everything seems fine?”
“She didn’t ask for anything?” Kieran repeats, sounding like he’s stuck on this being the most important information we’ve gathered tonight.
I track his movements as he continues pacing. “No.”
“She just started talking…” Kieran says under his breath as he stops and stares at the monitor. “What makes her different from our normal users?”
“Do you really think she’s any different from the standard user?” Jace inquires before grimacing. “I mean, other than having a demon of a system in place to keep her hidden?”
I take Kieran’s place at the wall of monitors and tag her thread so we can log her interactions into a separate folder to track how she uses HimLock. It gets a simple label.
Eris - Live Thread
“I think she doesn’t know how to lie… Yet.” I softly reply, mostly to myself. “What better way to test herself than with her very own AI boyfriend?”
Jace and Kieran both look at me, curious about what I mean. But I’m not quite sure I can explain it…
Most users come in needing something from the experience, whether that’s companionship, attention, validation, or control. You name it, we’ve seen it. These users poke at the AI like it’s a vending machine with a glitch, giving them what they think they want.
But Eris didn’t hesitate.
She speaks as if she’s already familiar with HimLock and its controls.
Or maybe like she doesn’t care what—or who—answers her.
Ishove another chicken nugget into my mouth as I stare at my phone. My eyes are so narrowed I’m damn near squinting at the unopened notification lighting up my screen.
It’s suspicious as fuck.
