Daniel had progressed to full-body hugging the bars, cheek pressed against cold metal, making small, choked sounds that ARIA immediately queued for permanent expunction from her long-term memory the instant she had spare processing cycles.
The woman waited.
Calm. Unmoved. Like someone who understood that humans sometimes needed several minutes to finish publicly shaming themselves before business could resume.
Eventually the vault door cycled shut with its usual hydraulic hiss and multilayered deadbolt engagement.
The moment the seal completed, the gold disappeared from ARIA's senses.
Not physically. The bars were still there—ARIA confirmed it through residual vibration analysis of the floor slab and micro-acoustic echoes inside the chamber. Eighteen hundred metric tons of flawless matter still occupied the same cubic volume.
But she could no longer sense it.
