Anyone else would see chaos.
I see the blueprint of my own mind.
“Alright,” I murmur under my breath.
If Katerina wants ARGO, she’ll have to take it with me.
I begin rewriting key sections of the code, embedding hidden protocols deep inside the system’s neural framework.Not obvious failsafes—those can be detected and removed—but subtle, elegant traps.
Biometric authorization.
My retinal scan.
My neural signature from the cognitive response mapping I built during early testing.
I’m halfway through the redesign when a realization stops my fingers cold.
I can’t finalize any of this.
Not without the original architecture.
And the original architecture—the clean version of ARGO, the research logs, the baseline models—all of it sits on my university servers.
Servers that are now under federal seizure.
I stare at the screen for a long moment before slowly pushing my chair back.
There’s only one way to get to it.
And Mike’s not going to like it.
I slide off the stool and walk into the living room.
Mike is seated at the table, his laptop open, deep in a virtual meeting. Three faces stare back from the screen.
Timofey.
Konstantin.
Dimitri.
They’re mid-discussion when I speak.
“Mike, I want to surrender to the feds temporarily.”
The reaction is immediate.
“Ellie, what the fuck? How do you come up with these things?” Mike’s chair scrapes loudly against the floor as he stands. “Absolutely not.”
On the screen, Timofey’s eyebrows shoot up. Konstantin leans forward sharply. Dimitri mutters something under his breath in Russian.
Mike says, staring at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Timofey exhales. “Ellie…why?”
I walk closer to the laptop until I’m standing directly in front of the screen.
“I’m building a countermeasure,” I say calmly. “But I can’t complete it without accessing my original research.”
