Chapter 6

I didn’t press 'Execute.'

With the world watching, I watched the counter hit zero and manually initiated a standard System Shutdown instead.

The giant screen flickered. The artificial warmth in the AI’s voice stuttered into static before dying into total silence.

"She’s unstable," Ethan whispered into the microphone. His voice dripped with practiced pity. He was confident he had won. "She just destroyed the only tool that calmed our daughter down."

The crowd turned on me. Murmurs of "danger" and "unfit mother" filled the hall. Ethan stood taller. He basked in the sympathy of the board members. But as he…