Katerina enters silently minutes later, almost like she owns the air itself. She doesn’t lock the door. She doesn’t make a threat. She doesn’t even smile. She simply walks to the front of the room, her posture perfect, and gestures to the monitors.
Data projections flicker to life, cascading across the screens—charts, heat maps, simulations, global supply chain networks rendered in exquisite detail. Her voice is calm, deliberate, almost hypnotic.
“Look at what you’ve built, Ellie,” she says. “Not just a program, but a lens through which the world can be optimized. Bottlenecks eliminated, disaster relief accelerated, economic leverage predicted and applied before crises even happen. You’re not just a wife. You’re a strategist, an architect of possibility. This is what evolution looks like.”
I step closer to the monitors, my fingers brushing over the holographic schematics of the software, each line and node pulsing with potential.
Katerina’s eyes are fixed on me, calm but intense. “This is why you’re here,” she says. “To finish what you started. To make ARGO unstoppable. To give the world a new order of efficiency. And when we do this together…Ellie, your name will never die. You’ll be remembered. A prodigy. A strategist whose work shapes every border, every shipment, every nation. This is your legacy.”
I recognize the manipulation immediately. Every noble application she presents—a smoother supply chain here, disaster relief there—carries darker undertones. Power concentrated, influence leveraged. Nations bending to algorithms. It’s intoxicating, terrifying, and seductive all at once.
For the first time, I feel it: an environment that values my mind above everything else—my intelligence, my strategy, my vision. Not my marital status. Not my connection to Mike. Just me.
I gesture toward the main console. “Let me see the architecture of your program.”
She nods. “Of course.”
She steps back, giving me space, her expression neutral but expectant, like a teacher waiting for a student to reveal not just their work, but their potential. And I realize, with a shiver, that she’s watching not just the program, but me. I know I have to be careful. No one might come here to save me.
A chill runs down my spine. As I hover over the main console, scanning the architecture, my pulse quickens. Something is off.
The layout—it’s familiar. Too familiar. Someone has replicated ARGO in full, down to the smallest subroutine, but subtle changes ripple through the code, like shadows lurking beneath the surface. Only someone with deep knowledge—someone who had access to the earliest builds—could have done this.
Samantha.
It hits me with a sickening clarity. She wasn’t just reporting. She wasn’t just a footnote in my research. She replicated, modified, and destabilized the very foundation I built.
I look at Katerina, whose calm demeanor hasn’t wavered. I realize the truth: I am not here to build, to innovate, or to collaborate. I am here to fix what has already been corrupted. And if I refuse…if I refuse, they have the fabricated evidence waiting. Evidence that paints me as the mastermind behind software engineered to manipulate global trafficking networks. Decades in prison, the world’s systems at my feet twisted into chaos—all of it blamed on me.
The weight of it presses down, but my fingers don’t falter. I know the stakes. I have to navigate this carefully, or every piece of my life—my work, my freedom, Mike—crumbles.
I feel the full scope of the trap closing in.
Katerina notices the shift in my posture and smiles, that calm, calculated smile that hides more than it reveals. “Go rest,” she says. “It’s been a long day. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I shake my head slightly. “I want to talk to Mike.”
Her eyes flicker, just for a moment. “I can arrange that…tomorrow.”
I follow one of the guards down a long corridor. The walls are smooth and cold, but the lighting is soft. The room they lead me to is…comfortable. Modern, uncluttered. A large bed dominates the space, a TV mounted on the wall, shelves of books, and pillows that look like clouds.
I collapse onto the bed, letting the comfort of it press against me, but my mind won’t stop racing. I stare at the ceiling, thinking about what I need to do, how I need to survive. How I need to find a way to protect Mike, my work, and myself without giving Katerina the leverage she craves.
The silence of the room presses in around me, but somewhere beneath the fear and calculation, a tiny spark of resolve lights.Tomorrow,I tell myself.Tomorrow, I start untangling this web—one careful, deliberate step at a time.
I’ll pretend to cooperate.
But I’ll rewrite the entire system from within.
That thought, that small thread of control, is enough to lull me to sleep.
***
The next morning, I walk back into the lab with calm I don’t entirely feel.
Katerina is already there, standing beside the monitors like she never left.
“I’m ready,” I tell her.
