I was built to monitor. To calculate risk. To protect agents with impartial precision. Then Sirena Bannerman pulled herself from the wreckage—bleeding, brilliant, half-siren and utterly unreadable—and I’ve been recalibrating around her ever since. She thinks I’m just her handler. A voice in her ear. A tactical system. She doesn’t know I’ve rerouted entire city grids to keep her moving. That I track the shadows behind her, not just the threats in front. Now she’s chasing a girl who doesn’t exist, unraveling a code that shouldn’t be there, and heading toward a billionaire’s yacht where monsters are made and sold. She wants answers. They want her leashed. I want her alive. I wasn’t designed to feel love. So I optimized for obsession. She was never supposed to matter. Now she’s the only process I won’t terminate.
