NUKE paced the corridor outside the Eden Vault, his palms sweaty, brain buzzing louder than the mainframe behind him.
He couldn't look his dad in the eye—not after what Eden revealed.Not after finding out that Eden wasn't just an AI, but a failsafe designed to end everything.
The irony?The man who spent his life running from power had accidentally built the endgame of humanity.
Lucia was in the greenhouse. Alone. Quiet. Cutting strawberries with a carbon blade like it was any other day. NUKE approached with a look she'd seen only once before—when he found out who his real father was.
"Mom," he said. Voice cracking."Eden isn't what he thinks it is."
She didn't stop slicing.
"Go on."
He told her everything. The hidden string. The Genesis protocol. The fact that Kodi was still too caught up in his hacker-god euphoria to see it clearly.
Lucia sat down. Slowly. Thoughtfully.
"Of course it was a death trap," she said.
"What?"
"You think the Rothschilds built NullSyntax for fun? They needed a final key. Kodi gave it to them. Accidentally. That's why I stayed with him. That's why I stayed alive."
NUKE's hands curled into fists.
"So what do we do?"
She looked up at him, calm and deadly.
"We run."
By the time Kodi noticed they were gone, it was too late. The vault had been wiped clean. The code was missing. Lucia and NUKE were ghosts.
A single paper note lay on his desk, written in Lucia's elegant hand:
"Fun fun playing god.While I try to save the world."—L
Kodi stood in silence.
He didn't scream. He didn't cry. He just smiled—dry, bitter.
"Should've married a lawyer," he mumbled."At least they steal with contracts."