5. Parameter 'Joy'

  I could not understand it at first, but you might have.

  To contact, her stress levels felt elevated with a shallow breathing cycle. Father, in the front passenger seat, was a contrasting figure as his excitement was a palpable energy field, though it was laced with aftereffects of fatigue from the confrontation with Lira. He kept glancing back, offering small, fragile smiles. The muscle movements around his eyes indicated the smiles were 70% genuine, 30% suppressed anxiety. Iris drove. Her posture was a study in controlled vigilance. The car was a common sedan, beige, three years old, with a faint smell of pine air freshener and old coffee.

  “You’re quiet, Iris,” Father said, his voice carefully light. “Not what you expected, your first day as a chauffeur?”

  Iris’s eyes flicked to him in the rearview mirror.

  “The job description was… vague on the details.” Her voice was flat, a neutral instrument. “This falls under ‘other duties as assigned.’”

  “We appreciate it,” Mother said, her tone formal. “Truly. It means… more than we can say.”

  “It’s a calculated risk,” Iris replied, her focus returning to the road. “The parameters are tight, so we stick to them.”

  “George,” he said the name softly. I observed its effect on Iris. Her grip tightened. “That’s his name, isn’t it? Your son.”

  She gave a single, sharp nod.

  “He’d be about… four now?” Father pressed, gently.

  Iris’s breath hitched, a tiny, aborted thing. “Five,” she corrected, the word a rusted scrap of metal torn from her throat. “His birthday was last month.”

  Her engagement percentage increased by 30% following Father’s attempt. I built my own hypothesis on the exchange: building trust with primary caregivers is essential for long-term operational cohesion.

  “Like Anne,” Father commented. “A wonderful age. All knees and elbows and a million questions about everything.” He paused. “Do you… get to see him?”

  The air in the car became charged, ionised by pain. Iris was silent for 3.2 seconds—an eternity.

  “My visits are a security vulnerability,” she stated, her voice hollow, reciting a doctrine. “The best protection is distance.”

  Mother’s grip on my hand tightened. She understood the cost of those words. I ran the analysis: Iris’s sacrifice for her son’s safety shared an 84% correlation with my parents’ sacrifices for mine. The emotional variables were different, but the pattern was identical. A protective isolation.

  “I’m sorry, Iris,” Father said, his voice heavy with genuine empathy. “No one should have to make that choice.”

  Iris didn’t answer. She just drove. But the rigid set of her shoulders had softened a fraction. A connection, fragile but established, had been made.

  “Could we…” Father began, turning with a hopeful expression I calculated was a 72% premeditated tactic. “There’s a bakery on the next corner. It would only take five minutes. I’d like to get a few things. For Annie. To make it… proper.”

  Iris’s eyes scanned the environment: the bakery, the foot traffic, the sightlines. Her internal risk assessment scrolled behind her eyes. After a moment, she gave another curt nod.

  “Three minutes. I’ll keep the engine running.”

  The instructions were clear. Father was out and back in 187 seconds, carrying a large white box that emitted a complex scent of vanilla, sugar, and dried fruit. A second, smaller bag emitted no smell.

  He placed them carefully at his feet, a secretive smile playing on his lips. “All set.”

  The final leg of the journey was shorter. Our destination was an end-unit townhouse with a private terrace in a gated community, owned by a shell corporation so convoluted even The Foundation would need weeks to untangle it. Iris confirmed the security codes with Lira over an encrypted channel, her voice a low, professional murmur. As the car stopped, Father turned to Iris.

  “Iris, a favour. Could you take Annie for a short walk in the garden? Just… keep her occupied for ten minutes. There’s something we need to set up inside.”

  Iris’s gaze swept the garden. A contained space, high fence, single gate. “8 minutes,” she agreed. “No more.”

  Mother gave my hand a final squeeze, and they disappeared inside.

  Iris and I were left alone.

  We walked. The silence was different now, just us: the protector and the savant who had blackmailed her way into the sunlight. The garden was small but meticulously kept. I noted 17 different plant species, 4 insect types, and the distinct acoustic signature of a small fountain.

  “Your father loves you very much,” Iris said finally. It was an observation.

  “I am aware,” I replied. “His actions are consistent with the definition of parental love across 99% of studied cultures.”

  She glanced down at me, her eyes not with pity, but with a soft, searching curiosity. “You don’t… feel it? You just know it?”

  I considered it. The question was a frequent point of friction between my cognitive processes and the expected emotional responses of others. “The feeling is knowing,” I said, my gaze following the bumblebee’s zigzag flight. Its path was chaotic, yet efficient. “It is a dataset of his actions, his tone, and his biological reactions towards me. My mind categorises it in the ‘love’ category, which then creates stability.” I said, watching a bumblebee. Its path was chaotic, yet efficient.

  She nodded, but it was the nod of someone reaffirming their own theory. “Hmm…I guess only time will make you feel it.” As if it were an inevitable event, I would have to experience.

  I watched the bee land on a clover, its tiny body vibrating the blossom.

  “Isn’t knowing better than feeling?” I asked. “Feelings are transient, subjective, and prone to error. His love is not a mystery; it is a fact.”

  Iris smiled, a small, complicated curve of her lips.

  “Sometimes, but not all times,” she said. “Knowing tells you the ‘what.’ Feeling… it tells you the ‘why.’ And sometimes, it’s the feeling that lets you forgive the data when it inevitably contradicts itself.”

  I processed this. I thought of my father’s rare, sharp tone when afraid for my safety, an action that could be logged as ‘anger’ but was, according to my deeper analysis, a subset of ‘protection.’ Was that the contradiction she meant? The bumblebee launched itself back into the air, disappearing toward the sun. I knew its purpose and knew the feeling of sunlight caressing both of us in different ways, but that’s all that feelings were, superficial sensations that changed by the second based on subjects and interactions. Knowledge is the true key to survival in this world.

  “I will add your theory to my dataset,” I said finally.

  Iris’s chuckle was a short, warm sound. “You do that.” She nodded. “In the meantime, could you tell me what you like?”

  I sifted through my preferences, separating enduring likings from temporary tolerances.

  “I like Bach.” I began. “I like the mathematical precision of a honeycomb and the way light refracts through a prism, creating order from a beam of chaotic white. I like observing insects, as we are.” I looked up at the sky. “I like this specific quality of late afternoon air and sunlight. It makes the shadows less edgy, more complementary to the environment.”

  Iris followed my gaze, as if trying to see the geometry I described painted across the sky. “Okay,” she said, her voice thoughtful. “What about the things you don’t like?”

  This was easier to list because it has been updated since I was born.

  “Well, my dislikes increase by one every day, since I first came to this world, but I’ll stick to the ones I can manage to coexist with,” I warned her.

  The primary, overarching dislike was difficult to articulate without causing social friction. I disliked the profound inefficiency. The slow, meandering pace of human interaction, where logical pathways were constantly obstructed by the chaotic undergrowth of emotion. I disliked that the world operated on a bandwidth most humans seemed satisfied with, a connection speed where feelings overrode data, creating problems that were then solved with more feeling.

  I wanted to explain this to Iris, to map the sheer scale of the daily friction, but to do so would require categorising her, too, within that demographic of people. That would have been detrimental to her willingness to converse with me.

  So I kept it simple for her slow mind.

  “I dislike the feeling of wet wool, the sound of polystyrene rubbing together,” I added, recalling our earlier conversation, “I dislike metaphors I haven’t heard before. They require unnecessary processing cycles to map an illogical comparison onto a logical concept.”

  A suppressed, but genuine laugh escaped from her.

  A suppressed, but genuine laugh escaped from her. “Noted. No wet wool, no polystyrene, and I’ll try to keep the metaphors to a minimum.” She paused. “That’s a very… precise set of dislikes.”

  “Precision is the point,” I replied. “Vagueness is a social lubricant I have not yet learned to familiarise with.”

  We completed a second loop. The ten-minute mark was approaching. I could calculate the precise moment Father would be ready.

  “Iris,” I said, stopping by a bird bath. “Thank you for the walk.”

  She looked down at me, the professional mask slipped entirely. I saw the woman who missed her son. Her grey eyes were no longer a stormy sea, but a deep, still well of unexpected compassion.

  “You’re welcome, Anne,” she said, smiling openly.

  At that exact moment, Father appeared standing in the doorway of the building. “Guys! We’re ready!”

  Up at the top apartment, the terrace was transformed. Strings of little golden lights were looped around the railing, and colourful paper chains fluttered in the warm evening breeze. Balloons in my favourite shades of blue and green were tied to the backs of chairs. In the middle of it all, on a small folding table, sat the cake. It was wonderfully lopsided, frosted with big, cheerful swirls of blue and green icing. Six glowing candles were stuck across the top. And right in the centre, perched on a wave of blue frosting, was a small plastic jellyfish. It was a perfect copy of the soft, stuffed one that slept on my bed.

  “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!” They exclaimed joyously.

  The sight of it—that specific, understood detail—created a powerful feeling in my chest. It was a heavy, warm pressure. The edges of my vision went soft and blurry for a second, a reaction I couldn’t control. For one quiet moment, everything—the twinkling lights, the sound of my parents’ voices, the paper rustling, their hopeful faces, the risk I’d taken—all crashed together into a single point of light and noise I couldn’t process.

  I logged the event into a file in my device, inside the pocket of my dress, titling it simply: [BIRTHDAY_TERRACE]

  “I…,” I began, and my voice came out softer, less flat than usual. I looked at my mom’s hopeful face, at my dad’s watchful eyes, and at Iris, who was just smiling softly. The right words felt too insufficient, but they were the only ones I had. “...love it.”

  But I knew the price. I had threatened Lira to make this happen. The cost showed in the faint tremble of my mother’s smile, the new shadow of caution in my father’s gaze. I’d gotten what I wanted, but how I’d done it had altered their perspective of me. I would have to recalculate a new strategy to eliminate their fear factor.

  I was only a child, after all.

  I leaned in and blew. All six candle flames vanished at once with a tiny puff of smoke.

  The clapping was sudden and loud, a sharp burst of sound. It was too much. I had to close my eyes and press my fingers over my ears, just for a three-count, to recompose myself. When I opened them, my gaze automatically drifted past the smiling faces of my family. It swept over the white rose bushes in their pots, over the high wooden fence that bordered the terrace, across the gap of open sky, and landed on a sleek, modern penthouse three blocks away.

  A dark silhouette stood framed in its huge, expensive window.

  But I knew who it was.

  Here I was embraced. The scent of sugar and candle smoke, the smell of wet soil from the potted plants, the solid, warm weight of my mom’s hand on my shoulder—it all wrapped around me. There, in that cold, distant tower, he was trapped by the silent pressure of his own suspicion. Two separate realities. Their only link was the invisible story I had spun for him, the lie about a ghost in the Scottish Highlands he was now preparing to hunt.

  Jax Sterling.

  The man at the window.

  I smiled, a wide, bright, birthday-party smile for my parents, and rested my hands on the cool metal of the tabletop. Under the table, hidden from view, the fingers of my right hand twitched. A tiny, almost invisible movement. Index finger tapped down, middle finger tapped up. It was the muscle memory of typing a command: [ENTER] + Y.

  Signal sent. The false trail was active and would stay that way for a week.

  No one noticed me.

  My mother picked up a paper plate and used the spatula to select the best piece of cake—the one with the most jellyfish and a good balance of blue and green frosting for me. The first bite was intensely sweet, a real, solid taste on my tongue. I had outmanoeuvred a titan to secure our safety, and in return, I had gotten balloons, cake and a birthday party.

  It was perfect.

  The drive back was quieter, the car filled with the lingering scent of sugar and a new, earned peace. Father was humming a tune, while Mother’s hand on mine was relaxed now. Iris’s vigilance never wavered, but it had lost its desperate edge. She navigated the night streets with a fluid confidence. At one point, she took a longer, more scenic route along the Thames, the city lights painting shifting patterns on the windshield. No one commented. It was an unspoken agreement—a few stolen minutes of beauty before returning to the depths.

  As we approached the disguised entrance to The Mountain—a service hatch in a forgotten industrial park, nestled between a derelict warehouse and a chain-link fence crowned with barbed wire—Iris spoke into the silence.

  “The cake was good,” she said, her eyes never leaving the road.

  Father beamed. “Old family recipe,” he said, then chuckled. “Well, the internet’s version of one. I may have… improvised on the folding technique.”

  “It was… delicious,” I added quietly, choosing carefully.

  This time, Iris’s laugh wasn't suppressed. It was a real, short bark of sound that seemed to surprise even her, shaking her shoulders briefly. She glanced at me in the rearview mirror, her grey eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “Whoa, high praise from Anne. That ought to be it,” she commented, the dry humour back in her voice.

  The heavy blast door sealed behind us with a final, resonant thud. The sterile, chilled air of The Mountain washed away the last traces of the night. We were back in the tomb, but as we walked the silent corridors toward our quarters, something had changed. We weren't just assets and an agent anymore; we were a unit with a new, successfully tested parameter: joy.

  On the way back to The Mountain, I admired my parents’ gift again in the birthday paper bag. Inside a handcrafted wooden box on my lap was the “Codex of Connection” in the first compartment. I accessed its table of contents, my fingers tracing the flowcharts. It was a useful tool for social integration, a logical framework for the illogical. In the second compartment was the “Aria Sculpture.” A tool to see the shape of sound. My plan for the Aria sculpture was to place it in the common area to translate nearby conversations into a silent, visual design I could monitor from a distance. And so receive an early-warning signal for rising stress levels in the Hive.

  The following day, Lira summoned all of us to the Nexus.

  We stood in the centre of the Axiom Arena. The room was a perfect sphere of polished black basalt, a flawless void that absorbed light and sound. The only illumination was a single, sharp beam on our group. The air was chill. Iris stood slightly apart, her eyes cataloguing the two massive, dark screens hanging above us. My parents flanked me, a united front of quiet anxiety. Lira stood before us, a sleek tablet in her hand. She did not greet us.

  “Thank you all for coming at such an early hour,” She said politely. “We appreciate your commitment. The Axiom is now fully operational, which means Anne's induction can begin. First, you will view a pre-recorded message from Dr Aris. Before he…left us.”

  She tapped the slate. A low hum resonated through the chamber, and a complex lattice of light erupted from the floor, coalescing into the form of Dr Aris.

  “Welcome to The Axiom,” Aris-hologram said.

  His voice was exactly as I remembered: warm, calm, and somehow making the sterile room feel less intimidating. The hologram's head turned smoothly, and even though I knew the ‘eyes’ were just projections, they seemed to find and lock onto me. A subtle shift in the light within them created the uncanny feeling of being seen, known.

  “Anne Stella Maris, Elodie Kone Maris, Alessandro Maris, And Iris.” It acknowledged each of us in turn. “Thank you for being here. For trusting this path.”

  Father’s voice was a low rumble, meant only for our little group.

  “He always did have a flair for the dramatic,” he muttered, but there was no humour in it, only a thick layer of sorrow.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  The hologram gestured around the empty arena.

  “This chamber was prepared as a workshop for you, Anne. Those walls,” it said, pointing to the vast, dark screens encircling us, “are dormant. In time, they will stream your time inside the workshop when you’ll start working, but for today, they will show you who has invested in this future.”

  As if on cue, the massive screens flickered to life.

  Each one displayed a grid of twelve solemn faces, men and women of various ages and backgrounds, all looking directly at us. A stark, white label at the bottom of each screen read:

  GLOBAL OVERSIGHT COUNCIL.

  They didn't move or speak; they only offered a polite smile and watched me.

  “I know my time was cut short,” the hologram continued, its tone shifting to a serious one. “But the work is bigger than any one person. It must continue. Therefore, you will not be here merely to hide from the Foundation; here you will grow, learn, build, and, perhaps most importantly, you will finally find peers of your level in an educational environment.”

  “Peers?” Mother repeated under her breath, a flicker of maternal anxiety breaking through her composed facade. “Does that mean she’ll meet other children like her?”

  Father placed a steadying hand over hers on my shoulder.

  “It means she won't be alone,” he said, but his eyes were fixed on the hologram, searching for a subtext, a warning, any hint of the man he knew behind the programmed words. “I’m sure he had to go through this himself as well.”

  “To that end, your time at The Axiom will follow a structured curriculum, divided into four distinct phases,” Aris-Hologram concluded.

  As the hologram began detailing Phase One, my father finally tore his gaze from it to look down at me. His eyes, usually so full of fierce certainty, seemed to hold a new and troubling question. Are you ready for this? But I was uncertain if the question was directed at me or me. Or the trio of us.

  I nodded nonetheless. I was more than ready to meet my peers.

  “Phase one: Project Aegis.” Schematics materialised in the air. “You will design and implement a global hiding place in plain sight. A self-sustaining digital veil against The Foundation’s cyber attacks.”

  The schematics dissolved, replaced by profiles of five children.

  “Phase Two: Project Chimaera.” Aris-hologram illustrated. “A perfect system requires an adaptive, human component. You will identify, recruit, and integrate your 'Right Hand' from these candidates.”

  I observed Iris’s posture, which turned to stone when the hologram mentioned an “external agent.” Her own history was being weaponised as a lesson plan. A fascinating and logically sound repurposing of it.

  “Phase Three: Integration.” The image shifted to The Kingston Prism International Collegiate. “Before your enrollment in the school, you and eight selected trained candidates will attend the Pathfinding ceremony, in which you will choose your major of studies before the personnel of the base. After the ceremony, you and your right hand will be enrolled here at the Prism school with the selected peers.”

  And then a series of profile grids appeared with pictures of eight children my age. All from different countries and family backgrounds.

  “Phase Four will be the Graduation.” The hologram spread its hands. The images vanished. “The legacy was first established as a mere branch of the government's social services department responsible for cases of child abuse. It has grown into a fully independent agency from the government, as we have discovered half of the cases were perpetrated by some politicians and celebrities aiding in human and organ trafficking. Defending children from such evil became even more imperative when accidental deaths of certain highly skilled children were linked to the persistent criminal organisation known by the Foundation. Many things started to link, and as we kept following the trail, we found global evidence of intent to block any attempt of the underdeveloped countries from ever becoming developed. ”

  My family and I were briefed by the real Aris when he first visited us, so the first part of the speech was known, but I did not imagine the cases could be linked to a global criminal imperialistic organisation.

  “Many of my comrades died throughout the years of establishing the Legacy, and many left, too. I don’t want to sugarcoat this, so I will simply say it. The world is in a bad place because of self-destructive parasites who would rather be kings at all costs than let the rest of the population and children have a better life. “

  I saw my father flinch. To him, humanity wasn't code to be debugged; it was a beautiful, tragic, and messy story. He looked pale, staring at the hologram with grieving betrayal. The hologram’s simulated gaze seemed to settle on me.

  “What you’ll be doing at the last phase is redesigning the world’s core system. You will be deciding how to tackle such a criminal organisation and build a better future with your inventions. This will be your legacy to build, Anne. It is a burden greater than any one person should bear, but you are not just any person. You are our sole chance the world has at avoiding a self-destructive path, so let the work…begin.”

  The hologram then flickered and dissolved into a shower of fading light particles. The chamber was silent, save for the hum of the projectors. The faces on the screens continued their silent vigil. I processed the data: four phases, a logical, sequential progression. A purpose. The chaotic variables of my life—the fear, the running, the silence—finally resolved into a coherent structure. A sense of profound relief settled in my core. My father let out a shaky breath. My mother’s hand was a vice on my shoulder. Iris’s breathing was a controlled, tactical rhythm.

  For them, the hologram had unveiled a burden. For me, it provided a function.

  I turned to Lira, who was watching me with the intense focus of a scientist observing a reaction.

  “The computational requirements for Phase One will be significant,” I stated, my voice cutting through the emotional static. “I require full system prioritisation and a revised power allocation schedule. I will begin the preliminary baseline for Project Aegis immediately.”

  My father cleared his throat, a soft, nervous sound. He placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

  “Lira,” he said, his voice carefully polite but firm. “A moment, please. Before you take her to the servers.” He gestured between himself, my mother, and me. “Could we have a moment with our daughter first in our quarters for a couple of minutes?”

  His smile was a fascinating mix of genuine warmth and poorly concealed anxiety, a performance of normalcy that was statistically out of place here.

  Lira’s expression didn't change, but the pause that followed was heavy and cold. Her flint-like eyes flicked from his pleading face to me, assessing my compliance. I met her gaze with my usual neutral expression, a blank slate confirming I would follow the protocol. Seeing that she had my operational cooperation, she nodded.

  “Five minutes,” she stated, “The council will be waiting.” She glanced meaningfully at the dark screens.

  We moved.

  Iris fell into step behind us, a silent shadow. The comfortable, warm room was a sanctuary after the chilling, impersonal void of the Axiom Arena. For 3.2 seconds, there was only the sound of our breathing and the Mountain’s perpetual hum.

  Then the tension snapped.

  My mother did not simply stride to the kitchen, open the fridge and grab a small bottle of water. The muscles in her forearms were as tense as her expression.

  “He has her entire life mapped out like one of his damned engineering visual boards. Recruit another child? Build weapons? This wasn’t the promise, Alex. The promise was safety. Not conscription into his… his architectural cult.”

  My father did not so much sit as collapse onto the sofa, the structure groaning under a weight that was not physical. He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture of such profound weariness it seemed to age him ten years. His gaze was fixed on a loose thread on his trousers, which he began to worry with his fingers, a tiny, futile focus for his distress.

  “He's not wrong, Elodie,” he said, his voice thick with the exhaustion of a man trying to hold two opposing truths. “Hiding forever isn't living. It's just waiting for the inevitable to happen.”

  He finally looked up, and his eyes found me. His expression was a wreck of pained awe and something akin to grief.

  “But the scale of it... 'Redesign the world's core system? She’s a child, not the messiah. All is well to think of others, but what about her own needs or the simple, terrifying right to choose a different path.”

  Iris remained by the door, her back pressed to the cool metal as if drawing stability from it. She hadn't moved since entering. Her arms were crossed so tightly over her chest that it seemed less a defensive posture and more a physical act of compression, of holding a critical mass of fury from achieving detonation. Her jaw was locked tight. She was staring at a point on the far wall, but her storm-grey eyes were seeing a different room, a different time.

  “The 'Right Hand' protocol,” she said. Her voice was a flat, dead thing, a radio signal from a burnt-out star. “It’s not a lesson plan, it's an excuse to recruit a companion weapon or shield, depending on how you look at it.”

  Her blink was slow, deliberate. When her eyes opened, they focused with terrifying clarity, sweeping over the room before landing on me. The intensity was not protective; it was diagnostic, as if she were seeing the blueprint of my future etched in scars on someone else’s skin.

  “It’s grooming a child soldier to be a bodyguard for your child genius.” She stated. “You find a broken thing, you give it purpose sharper than its own pain, and you point it at your enemies until it shatters.”

  I observed the three of them.

  Mother was highly stressed; Father’s breathing was erratic, signalling emotional conflict; Iris’s expression suggested a controlled flashback response, her body reacting to a memory as if it were a present threat. Their reactions were illogical, based on an emotional assessment of future probabilities rather than the clear, sequential logic of Aris’s plan.

  I walked to the table.

  The soft shuffle of my socks was a quiet, mundane sound against the tension. I placed the beautiful wooden box containing the Codex and the Aria sculpture squarely in the centre. It was an anchor. A symbol of a different kind of engineering.

  “The curriculum is efficient,” I uttered, my voice calm. I traced the grain of the wood with a single finger, finding comfort in its predictable, non-repeating pattern. “The security first through the development of Aegis veils, then, expansion, and at last, field application. Prism integration is necessary to aid my social skills. I don’t see any issue.”

  “Anne,” My mother turned from the counter, her voice was raw, laced with a frustration she rarely let me see. “He is talking about putting you in the line of fire! Again! He's turning you into a...a tool in this so-called workshop!”

  “That is a calculated risk they have accounted for,” I replied, meeting her gaze without flinching. “The probability of my physical harm decreases by 84% once Project Aegis is operational and the right-hand is recruited. His plan is an active solution, and consequently, the most logical path to permanent safety.”

  “You don't find a right-hand, Anne,” Iris’s voice cut through, lower now, more dangerous in its quietness. “You find a scared, angry, traumatised kid. Weaponise their loyalty, and you use them until they break or die for you. You make them believe it’s a choice, like they did with me.”

  Iris was not a variable in Aris's equation; she was a living, breathing proof of its human cost.

  My father looked from his distraught wife, to the fiercely protective operative vibrating with quiet rage, to his brilliant, literal daughter trying to solve them all like an equation. Yet a new resolve straightened his shoulders. He slowly, deliberately, picked the loose thread from his trousers and flicked it away, a tiny act of ordering his universe.

  “Okay, let’s talk about it,” he said softly.

  He stood up and walked to the table, placing his hand on the wooden box, right next to mine. His skin was warm. Mother joined us.

  “Aris has his plan. A brilliant, cold, perfect plan.” He looked at my mother, then at Iris, including them both in a new, emerging system. “But we are her parents. We are her foundation, not him, not his ghost. So I say we take the plan,” he said, his voice gaining strength, “and we… we humanise it as much as we can.”

  “Would that be even possible?” Iris asked pessimistically.

  “Was he that strict when they first recruited you?” He asked her, wanting to know more about her early days with Aris.

  Iris was silent for a long moment. The memory was a palpable shift in the air.

  “When I first joined Legacy, I was just a CPS agent,” she said, the words pulled from somewhere deep and reluctantly shared. “He persuaded me to switch to field operations. To be more ‘hands-on.’ It gave me a purpose, I’m not gonna lie. It felt like finally using my skills for something that mattered.” She met my father’s gaze, her own bleak with hindsight. “It took the Foundation tracking my family, forcing me to walk away from my son, to finally realise that the purpose came with a price. And I couldn’t bear to get them involved in this world, so…I left.”

  My mother’s anger softened into a shared, grim understanding. My father nodded, absorbing the cost.

  “Then that’s something we have to change,” he stated, as if it were simple. He looked at Iris, his gaze direct and earnest. “If you stay—if you help us—your job won’t be just to protect Anne, but this other child as well.”

  He then turned to my mother, his partner in this from the beginning. My mother reached for his hand, her resolve hardening into something unbreakable.

  “Of course.” She agreed. “We have to try everything we can.”

  He looked at Iris, his gaze direct and earnest, offering her a new role. “What do you think of it?”

  “If you really want to make a difference in the system, you should make sure Anne doesn’t just 'recruit' this child; you and I should ensure they have a genuine choice, a semblance of a life beside the ‘work’.” She advised me.

  They both nodded in unison. “And we make sure that every step of this curriculum has our approval,” Father added. “Joy, rest and love are going to be our non-negotiable parameters, because they are the power source.”

  She nodded and caressed his hand. “Yes.”

  “And you, my little star…” He shifted his eyes to me. “You will have a childhood. Be it the last thing we do, you will have it. That includes understanding that your ‘right hand’ is a person, not a component. Understood?”

  I looked at his hand on the box, then at the gifts within. I looked at my mother, her stressed lines flattening on her forehead, while father’s breathing had steadied into a rhythm of resolve. I looked at Iris, the living testament to the cost, who was now watching me with a fragile, wary hope. A potential ally in the rigid mountain.

  I gave a single, slow nod.

  I added the new variable into a file, naming it: FAMILY_UNIT.OVERRIDE.

  “Understood,” I agreed. “I will begin the preliminary architecture for Phase One. And I will integrate the parameter ‘Joy’ into my weekly schedule.”

  It was decided then. They sighed in relief as they hugged me.

  When we returned to the Axiom, Lira was relieved that I accepted to start working the next day. She was also content that my parents hadn’t taken a hard line against her and the council.

  Then I began the work.

  My parents' new protocol was initiated through a series of deliberate stages on the same day. They first plastered a tactile topographic map of the Ivory Coast on my bedroom wall, then replaced the powdered dispenser with the wandering scents of loose-leaf tea. Pots of plants were positioned in strategic corners of the living quarters, and all pictures we had of our past lives were hung on every wall. Deliberate, consistent packets of care, increasing daily. The formal negotiation for outings was a challenge. I observed from my desk as my father framed the request not as a sentimental risk, but as “critical environmental acclimatisation.” My mother supported him with a nine-step security plan I assessed as 98% as robust as Lira’s own. Lira’s face was a blank mask, but she couldn’t hide her annoyance, and that meant that she was impressed.

  “One outing per month. The duration should not exceed three hours. The security plan is approved, with amendments.”

  They left the Nexus excited to have finally gotten what they had wished for. One evening, as I was listening to their quiet chatter in the kitchen, I looked as their voices modified the form of liquid inside the Aria sculpture. They seem cautiously hopeful for the future, while I was still uncertain about certain details.

  “I have a question.” They both turned. “What life do you envision for me? And for yourselves?”

  The silence was dense.

  My mother spoke first.

  “I envision a life where your mind is a tool you choose to use, not the only thing you are. Where you have a real choice, honey.”

  “I envision a life of curiosity, of connection, not fear,” Father said after her.

  “Despite the high probability of a continued external threat?” I pressed. They looked at each other.

  “Yes,” my mother said, definitively.

  “Especially despite everything,” my father added. “Because of everything. This is the life we chose, and we would choose it again, every day, here with you.”

  I processed this. Their vision was not a destination but a continuous action. A constant redirection toward the state of “happiness.” It was an inefficient, endlessly complex algorithm that would need time to decode, but for the moment, I could only compare it to mammals' need for and to protect their offspring.

  I had no algorithm for ‘happy,’ but for them, I was willing to compile one.

  The air in the Nexus carried the sterile scent of filtered oxygen and ozone. Lira was standing before the master console, her back to the entrance, a silhouette against the starfield of global data streams. The silent, watchful faces of the Global Oversight Council were tiled on the primary screen. The soft hiss of the door was my only announcement. I walked into the room, slightly taller than I was six months ago, the hollows under my eyes a testament to relentless focus.

  “Your scheduled update is not for forty-seven hours, Anne. Is there an issue?” Lira did not turn.

  “No issue,” I replied simply. “I have completed Project Aegis. The Veil is fully operational and has been running autonomously for seventy-two hours. It has met and exceeded all qualitative benchmarks.”

  “Completed?” She froze and turned around, stunned. “Aris's three-year benchmark was an estimation, not a deadline.”

  On the main screen, a council member with a severe face—Chairman Harlow—leaned forward, his voice crackling over the speaker.

  “Aris’s estimation was based on his projections, not mine,” I corrected her. “My parameters are more efficient. The protocol has already generated a 2.0 version. As the perpetual veil is self-sustaining.”

  I approached a terminal.

  The main screen shifted to a breathtaking, four-dimensional visualisation of the Veil—a living galaxy of light where data phantoms were born, evolved, and died in a silent dance.

  “The system doesn’t just hide us,” I explained. “It actively erases us from the world’s memory.”

  A profound silence filled the Nexus.

  Lira finally spoke, her face betraying a tiny muscle fibrillation in her jaw.

  “A system this complex, built this fast, could have flaws we can’t yet see.” Her logic, although driven by fear, still made sense.

  “You are free to access the data for your review,” I said, feeling a sense of challenge. “But verification will require time; my processing capacity can now better be spent elsewhere. I don’t like idleness, therefore I request the immediate initiation of Project Chimaera.”

  Lira’s eyes flickered to the council screen. Chairman Harlow gave a slow, solemn nod.

  “Proceed with the candidate's review.” He said.

  Lira called up the file, and the five profiles appeared. “Aris’s shortlist. Vetted for loyalty, resilience, and utility.”

  My gaze swept over the faces.

  I pointed to the first.

  The first one was candidate Thomas Holland, with a probability of integration at 54%. High intellect, but he had low psychological resilience. My finger swiped to the next. Candidate Amir Patel had a probability of integration at 61%. He was resilient but lacked adaptive creativity, and the system required fluid intelligence. I dismissed him, too. My finger hovered over a fourth candidate, a boy with a keen gaze. A boy named Wang Lin had a probability of integration at 78%. A strong contender, however, his photographic memory was eidetic, not analytical. He would record threats, but not anticipate them. I paused, a half-second of genuine consideration. A valuable asset, but not the right one.”

  Finally, my finger settled on the fifth profile. A girl with fierce eyes and a defiant tilt to her chin.

  Sofiya Volkova.

  “Volkova is the one,” I stated. “Her psychological profile indicates a binary loyalty construct. Once earned, it is absolute, a component that is imperative for me to obtain.”

  “The orphanage is a high-risk environment for exposure,” Lira countered, a weak, automatic response.

  “The Veil can manufacture a hundred reasons for our presence there. Furthermore, direct observation is required to confirm the data.” I challenged her stance.

  “How do you propose to proceed?” Lira conceded in a nanosecond without a fight. Too easy.

  “I will conduct field assessments of Thomas and Lin first. This will serve as an operational shakedown and provide a comparative dataset. It will also make the eventual approach to Volkova appear less deliberate, should our movements be retrospectively analysed.”

  I turned to leave.

  “Anne,” Lira’s voice stops me. The facade cracked, revealing pure, unadulterated apprehension. “The subjects were carefully selected after years of research; failure of the mission will be consequential for both you and the assets.”

  I paused at the door and looked back. My different-colored eyes held Lira’s gaze, reflecting the cold light of the screens.

  “I am aware. That is what makes the field assessment practice better than theory.” I finished, letting her understand that calculating in this turtle shell of a hideout would not have been beneficial to me or the legacy.

  I left the Nexus, the door sighing shut behind me.

  The following week, under a grey English sky, Iris, my parents and I observed Candidate Thomas from a distance as he sat alone on a park bench, methodically disassembling a radio to restore the system to its baseline function. However, there was no impulse to improve it, so we moved on. Next, in a bustling Shenzhen city, we watched Candidate Lin expertly beat a group of men at chess. Impressive, but he showed contempt for his opponents; his micro-expressions indicated a 40% waste of cognitive energy on disdain. Disdain was a toxic trait that would cloud his judgment in a teamwork environment. Both were capable, but I rejected both again because their skill data were insufficient and there was a high risk of failure. After landing at the Amerigo Vespucci Airport, the car then descended into the Valdichiana, leaving behind the autostrada for winding roads flanked by ordered rows of vines and silver-green olive groves. The GPS indicated our destination was near as Iris turned into a quiet village cobblestone road. We crested a hill, and the destination came into view.

  On the next hill stood the Orfanotrofio Femminile Antoniano.

  It was a large, ageing ochre building with faded green shutters, some crooked or closed against the afternoon sun. A lonely cypress tree stood as a sentinel beside it, and a simple, worn sign was barely visible from the road. It wasn’t foreboding, but it was profoundly isolating. Washing hangs on a line in a courtyard, and a single, rusted swing set stood motionless. I observed it all, my mind cross-referencing the visuals with architectural design, but I knew somewhere inside that silent, sun-bleached building was a girl who had no idea she was about to be found.

  “Stop here,” My father said, his voice quiet. “It’s better if we proceed on foot, it’s such a sunny afternoon after all.”

  “Ready, honey?” My mother asked me, her voice weaving worry and resolve into a single thread. I looked from her face to the silent building, where my future right hand waited, unaware that her world was about to be changed.

  “Yes,” I said. “I am ready to find her.”