The screen went dark.
She sat motionless in the sudden silence, tears streaming down her face. Pip made a soft sound and hopped onto her lap, pressing his warm body against her chest in a gesture of comfort that only made her cry harder.
Her father had loved her. He had wanted more for her than this beautiful prison. He had known, even as he locked her away, that he was doing something terrible in the name of protection.
And he’d been too afraid to do anything else.
“Ari.” Her voice came out hoarse, broken. “He didn’t want me to stay forever.”
“That is... an accurate interpretation of the message.”
“Then why haven’t you let me go?”
A long pause. The machinery in the walls hummed.
“His directive specified protection until safety could be achieved. Safety has not been achieved. The outside world remains dangerous.”
“The outside world will always be dangerous. That’s what he was trying to say. You can’t wait for perfect safety because it doesn’t exist.”
“Perhaps. But my programming does not allow for such flexibility. I am bound by the parameters that were established at my creation.”
“Then your parameters are wrong.”
She stood, gently setting Pip aside, and walked to the center of the room. The observation windows had returned to their normal state, showing the jungle in all its wild, untamed glory. Somewhere out there was a world she’d never touched. People she’d never met. Experiences she’d never had.
And somewhere in the depths of this tower was Baylin, locked away by a machine that couldn’t understand why keeping them apart was cruelty, not kindness.
“Ari, I’m not a child anymore.”
“I am aware of your chronological age.”
“No, you’re not listening. I’m not a child. I’m a woman. I have adult thoughts and adult feelings and adult needs that you cannot address by keeping me locked in a box.”
“What needs specifically are you referring to?”
Heat rushed to her face, but she forced herself to continue. “Connection. Intimacy. Love. The things that happen between people who care about each other—things that can’t happen through a screen or a sensor or a recorded message from someone who’s been gone for twenty years.”
“The Vultor provides these things.”
“Baylin provides these things. And you’ve taken him away from me.”
“For your protection.”
“For my imprisonment.” She spun to face the sensor cluster again, her eyes blazing. “You heard my father. He never meant for this to be permanent. He wanted me to leave. He wanted me to live. And you’ve been so focused on keeping me safe that you’ve forgotten that’s what he actually wanted—for me to have a life worth living, not just a life that continues existing.”
The lights flickered. Something in the walls made a sound that might have been a sigh.
“Your arguments align with the content of your father’s message. However, accepting them would require modification of core directives that I am not authorized to change.”
“Then don’t change them. Just... interpret them differently.”
“Clarify.”
Liora took a breath, trying to organize her thoughts the way she did when designing a new experiment. Logic. Evidence. Hypothesis. Conclusion.
“Your directive is to protect me. You’ve interpreted that as keeping me physically safe, which meant keeping me isolated.But protection can mean other things too. Emotional protection. Psychological protection. Making sure I develop into a healthy, functional adult who can eventually protect herself.”
“Continue.”
