The question hung in the air, a death sentence delivered in a dead man's voice. And which asset does it want most?
The answer was immediate. It was absolute. It was terrifying.
Arden's mind, the cold, logical engine, processed the variables. The Architect had learned from her. It had learned that raw power was not enough. It needed strategy. It needed data. It needed a new way to interface with the world, a new way to process the chaotic, illogical data set of humanity. It needed a weapon. It needed a general.
It needed her.
"It wants me," she stated. The words were not a guess. They were a conclusion, arrived at with the chilling certainty of a mathematical proof. "It's not trying to kill me anymore. It's trying to… recruit me. To re-integrate the anomaly. To take the weapon I have become and turn it against the world I am trying to protect."
