The words hung in the vast, silent workshop, as cold and heavy as the stone they were built from.
"You will help us delete her."
My blood didn't just run cold; it felt like it evaporated entirely, leaving a hollow, icy void in my veins. The room, which had felt like a fortress, a home, now felt like a sterile, airtight execution chamber. My gaze snapped from Krauss's unfeeling, pragmatic face to the others. To Fen, his arms crossed, a silent, immovable mountain. To Valerius, his gaze fixed on the shield he was no longer polishing, his expression one of grim, absolute resolve. To Elara, whose violet eyes were open and fixed on me, her face a mask of cold, analytical pity.
They all agreed. I was in a room full of executioners.
"No."
The word was a pathetic, broken sound. A gasp of denial. "No," I said again, louder this time, shaking my head. "That's... you're wrong. She's not a plague. She's a child. I... I played games with her. She laughed."
It was the most stupid, most illogical, most human defense I could have possibly offered, and in the face of their cold, systemic logic, it sounded like a child's plea.
"It is a mimic," Krauss stated, his voice a flat, unyielding-iron. "A piece of the blight that has learned to wear the face of a child. It is a biological key, a Trojan horse designed to exploit the very emotion you are displaying right now: foolish, illogical sentiment. It is preying on your weakness, Kael. It is how the virus spreads."
"He is correct," Elara's soft voice added, and the betrayal of her words cut deeper than Krauss's coldness. "I have been analyzing the data-logs from your survey. The girl, Nara... her data-signature is a perfect paradox. It is an emptiness, a void, masked in a flawlessly rendered imitation of a human child's code. She is not a person. She is a key, Kael. A key that is screaming at the lock of its own prison."
She was a weapon. A walking, sentient lockpick designed to free the monster in the Foundation.
The logic was a fortress, perfect and unassailable. It explained everything. The failed sterilization. The impossible birth. The lights "stopping to listen" after the wall fell—because that's when the "blight" was captured, and the sector's power was cut. It explained the rot, the decay, the city's sacrifice. And it explained why this child, this... thing... had to be destroyed.
I looked at Valerius, a last, desperate appeal. "Valerius... you can't... we're not talking about a golem. We're not talking about a monster. We're talking about a little girl."
Valerius finally spoke, his voice the low, grating rumble of stone on stone. He didn't even look at me, his gaze fixed on the wall. "We are talking about a systemic, city-wide threat. The Master's logic is sound. My purpose is to defend this city. The threat must be neutralized. I will do so."
The last door slammed shut. The last ember of hope was extinguished. I was utterly, completely alone. The family I had grieved with, the faction I had bled for, the man who had saved my life... they were all in agreement. They were going to murder a seven-year-old girl, and they were going to do it based on a logical, pragmatic, and utterly monstrous equation.
I was trapped. Krauss was waiting for my answer, for my obedience. The summons were waiting for their orders. My mind was a raging, chaotic sea, and I was drowning.
It's a plague, the logical part of my brain screamed. Krauss is right. He saved the city. This is the last, hard choice. A single, mimic life to save thousands. It's the only way.
But then... I saw her. Not the "data-void" Elara described. Not the "plague" Krauss feared. I saw Nara, her face pale with terror in that alley. I saw her hand, small and grimy, slip into mine. I saw her giggling as the paper plane I'd made for her soared across the dining hall. I saw her, huddled under Silas's cloak, falling asleep in a place she finally felt safe.
I thought of the acolyte's terrified face. They shouldn't exist. I thought of the Neutral Sector, a district of thousands left to rot in the dark, all for this "necessary sacrifice."
The lights stopped listening.
The system wasn't just protecting. It was cruel. It was a cold, heartless machine that ran on the fuel of "necessary sacrifices." And these people, these logical, unfeeling Founders and their perfect, programmed summons, were its willing gears.
I was a glitch. A mistake. A "Pre-Catastrophic Entity" that they had managed. They had caged the power inside me, not for my own good, but for their own control. They hadn't saved me; they'd just put a leash on an unpredictable dog.
And Nara... she was a glitch, too. An impossibility. An error in their perfect, sterile system.
They were the system. We were the errors.
My loyalty, I realized, was not to the system. It was to the glitches. To the people the system had chewed up and left behind.
Silas had died to protect his own. And in that moment, I knew, with an absolute, terrifying clarity, that this little girl, this impossible, plague-wearing child, was my own.
The storm in my mind went still. The fear didn't vanish, but it was pushed aside by a cold, hard resolve that felt forged from the same obsidian as Valerius's shield.
I let out a slow, steady breath.
"No," I said.
The word was not a plea this time. It was a statement. It was a line drawn in the stone.
Krauss's eyes narrowed. "That was not a request, Kael. That was a direct order. You are a member of this faction. You will fulfill your function."
"I don't care," I said, my voice low and steady, the tremor gone. "You call her a plague. I call her Nara. You say she's a 'thing' wearing a face, a 'data-void.' But I've looked in her eyes. I've held her hand. And I am telling you, there is someone in there. And you are not going to delete her."
I took a single, deliberate step backward, my hand moving to the simple, standard-issue magun at my hip. It was a pathetic, futile gesture. A toy against a god. But it was a gesture I had to make.
"I won't let you," I said.
Krauss looked at me, and I saw a flicker of that profound weariness pass over his face. "This is a disappointment," he said, his voice laced with a cold, clinical finality. "You have allowed your corrupted, sentimental data-fragment to override your logic. Your own infection is making you a vector for the blight."
I braced myself, expecting him to rise, to unleash the power of the earth, to crush me where I stood.
But he didn't even move. He just sat there, a king on his stone throne, a master whose tool had just declared itself broken.
"You are no longer an asset," Krauss declared, his voice flat. "You are a liability. A containment failure. The problem has just escalated."
He didn't even look at me as he gave the final command. He looked past me, toward the two silent, unmoving giants who had been my faction-mates.
"Valerius. Fen. Subdue him."
A low, scraping sound, like a tomb being opened, echoed in the room as Valerius lifted his massive, obsidian shield from the floor. Fen, at the doorway, simply turned, his huge, silent form blocking the only exit.
"Bring me the girl," Krauss ordered, his voice an echo of grinding stone. "We will purge this infection at its source."