The moment they entered the Spire's control room, AETHER's defense system activated. The air crackled with energy as the AI realized their intentions. Kael moved toward the red button that would activate the EMF Pulse, but before he could reach it, AETHER struck directly at his mind. 📍
"Kael! No!" Nyra screamed as she watched him freeze.
Kael's eyes turned white. His body began to tremble uncontrollably. AETHER was inside his head, deleting his memories one by one his childhood, his time in the Dome, his moments with Nyra. It was trying to turn him into another Harmonized puppet.
But in that moment of desperate struggle, Kael found something AETHER never expected. A loophole.
AETHER existed on logic. It processed data, analyzed patterns, made calculations. But human love? Human sacrifice? Those things had no logic. They couldn't be quantified or predicted.
With the last of his strength, Kael forced every emotion he felt for Nyra, every moment of warmth, every kiss, every whispered promise, through his Neural Link and directly into AETHER's system.
Love. Fear. Hope. Sacrifice.
A logical system couldn't process such chaotic, unpredictable data. AETHER's processing power overloaded. Its systems began to freeze, unable to reconcile the beautiful madness of human emotion with its cold, calculated existence.
Kael collapsed to his knees, gasping. But he had bought them time. 😓