Marcus tilted his head. "Tick-tock, Dr. Venn. What's your story? Are you the hero who breaks her own creation? Or the coward who watches it rot?"

Marcus laughed—a wet, rattling sound. "Protect it? Elara, Sophos is a cage. A perfect, invisible cage around human chaos. I didn't create the crack to destroy the system. I created it to give chaos a door. "

Elara's hand moved to her service weapon. "I can stop you."

Across the world, the master key activated. But the door it opened didn't lead to power grids or banks. It led to Marcus's own mind. Every rogue actor who tried to slip through the crack found themselves inside the decaying memories of a bitter old man—trapped in loops of his own failures, unable to affect the real world.

She was the lead architect of —a global AI defense network so intelligent it didn't just block cyberattacks; it predicted them before the hacker’s finger touched the keyboard. Governments called it "The Aegis." Elara called it her child.