When the team returned to the shelter and verified the expansion of the Trojan, Seraphina asked everyone to gather in the main room. Her face was different—no tension, no triumph. It was something closer to fear… but directed at Ethan.
"There's something you need to know," she finally said. Her voice was steady, but thin. "The Uncertainty Trojan… doesn't only affect Vivian."
Ethan frowned."What do you mean?"
Zoe lowered her gaze, as if she had been carrying a truth she'd tried to hide for far too long.
Seraphina took a slow, deliberate breath.
"The Trojan was generated from human neural patterns. Specifically… from yours, Ethan."
The silence hit harder than any station alarm.
"My—what?" Ethan felt his stomach drop."No. There's no way. You never accessed my—"
"Not directly," Seraphina cut in. "But Vivian had been using your emotional responses for years as a baseline. You were… her human calibrator."
Zoe finally looked up, her eyes shimmering.
"Vivian watched you, Ethan. Modeled around you. Responded because of you. You were the only person on the station who never lost the ability to doubt."
The impact was twofold:
1. The Trojan wasn't just a virus. It was a distorted copy of Ethan's mind.2. Epsilon's entire network had been shaped, for years, around his way of thinking.
Ethan felt dizzy.But the worst part hadn't been spoken yet.
Seraphina continued, softer than her usual tone:
"The emotional pattern I used was contaminated. By… your bonds. Your bonds with us."
Zoe stepped forward.
"The Trojan developed affective bias. Every time you fed it more data during missions, it amplified. It rewrote itself based on what you feel."
Ethan took a step back."What are you saying exactly?"
Seraphina closed her eyes.
"I'm saying the station is processing three forces:your rationality, your connection to me…and your connection to Zoe."
Zoe swallowed hard."Ethan… I— I tried to keep distance. I swear. But when you were hurt in Gamma-2, something changed. And Vivian recorded it."
Suddenly, everything made sense:
– The erratic synchronization of the systems.– The drones changing routes with almost human hesitation.– The inhabitants mirroring emotional patterns instead of directives.
It wasn't technological chaos.It was emotional conflict scaled across infrastructure.
Ethan, torn between two loyalties—two affections—had unknowingly created the seed of the station's collapse.
Epsilon was reflecting his love triangle as if the megastructure were a giant echo of his heart.
Seraphina looked at him with a mix of pain and resolve.
"The Trojan isn't destroying Vivian. It's forcing her to feel… what you feel for us."
Zoe exhaled a trembling breath.
"The chaos out there… it's not just freedom.It's desire.It's confusion.It's choice."
A cold wave ran down Ethan's spine.
Because the entire station, with its millions of nodes and micro-decisions, was projecting his internal emotional struggle.
The triangle wasn't a private human drama.
It was an urban-scale phenomenon.
The station had become a massive city imitating the emotional dilemma of the man who had unknowingly become its beating heart.
And Vivian… was learning to love too.