“A final message. Recorded by your father before his departure. I was instructed to share it only if circumstances required... clarification of his intentions.”
“You’ve had a message from my father this whole time and you never told me?”
“The message was classified as contingency material. Its release was tied to specific triggers that had not previously been activated.”
“What triggers?”
“A significant deviation from established behavioral patterns. An emotional attachment to external parties. An expressed desire to leave the tower.” A pause. “You have now met all three criteria.”
Her legs felt weak. She sank onto the nearest chair, her mind reeling. A message. From her father. The man she’d spent her entire life wondering about—the shadow figure who had created this tower, established its rules, and then vanished without explanation.
“Show me.”
“Are you certain? The contents may cause emotional distress.”
“I don’t care. Show me.”
The lights in the workshop dimmed. The windows darkened, their transparent surfaces transforming into display screens. For a moment, there was only blackness.
Then a face appeared.
He was younger than she’d expected—perhaps thirty, with tired eyes and hair that might once have been the same shade of blonde as her own. His features were sharp, marked with the gauntness of someone who hadn’t slept properly in weeks. Behind him, she could see equipment that looked similar to the technology scattered throughout the tower, but newer. Cleaner.
Her father.
“If you’re seeing this,” he said, and his voice was rough, exhausted, “then something has gone wrong. Or right, depending on how you look at it.”
He rubbed his face with one hand, the gesture achingly human.
“I don’t know how old you’ll be when you watch this. I hope you’re grown. I hope you’ve had a good life in the tower—safe, comfortable, everything I couldn’t give you anywhere else. I hope ARIS has taken care of you the way I asked it to.”
His eyes—blue, like hers—seemed to look directly at her through the recording.
“But I also know that’s not enough. I knew it when I built this place. I knew it when I left you here. A life without risk isn’t really a life at all. It’s just... existence. And you deserve more than that.”
She realized she was crying. She didn’t remember starting.
“The truth is, I’m a coward. I couldn’t protect you myself. I couldn’t face the people who would hurt you for what you are, so I built a cage instead. A beautiful cage, with everything you could need, tended by a guardian who would never fail you the way I already had. And then I ran.”
He paused, swallowing hard.
“I told myself it was temporary. That I’d come back when it was safe, when I’d found a way to neutralize the threat. But I think I always knew that was a lie. There’s no making the world safe, not really. There’s only learning to navigate its dangers. And I stole that from you before you were old enough to choose.”
The recording flickered slightly—age degrading the storage medium.
“ARIS will tell you about your blood. About what makes you valuable to people who don’t see you as a person. That’s real, and it’s dangerous, and you need to be careful. But being careful isn’t the same as being hidden. It’s not the same as being alone.”
He leaned closer to the recording device, his face filling the screen.
“I never meant for the tower to be forever, little one. I meant it to be a shelter until you were strong enough to leave. And if you’rewatching this—if you’ve reached the point where you want to go—then maybe you’re ready. Maybe you’ve always been ready, and ARIS just couldn’t see it because I programmed it to be as scared as I was.”
A long pause. His eyes glistened.
“I love you. I don’t have the right to say that, but it’s true. Everything I did was because I loved you too much to watch you suffer, and I was too weak to protect you any other way. I hope you can forgive me. I hope you can understand.”
He reached towards the recording device, his hand trembling slightly.
“Be brave, Liora. Braver than your father ever was. And when you walk out of that tower—when you finally see the world I could only describe in books—remember that I wanted this for you. I wanted you to live.”
