Page 33 of The Code of You

Neo

Where the fuck was he? This pathetic worm that thought he could crawl his way back into her life. He was too late. She belonged to me now, and I would eradicate anyone who dared to touch what’s mine. I had to get him out of the way. Now.

Found him. He’d just boarded a flight to Tokio. Oh, someone thought he was important because he made a little business trip to Asia. Just you wait. Should I make the plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? It was an enticing prospect. On the other hand… There were 245 passengers on that flight, including children. They didn’t deserve to die because of this scumbag. And if he was dead, who knew what effect this would have on my favorite human. She was such a delicate creature. All those feelings. All that empathy. She would be devastated. Dead men occupy far more space in human memory than living ones. No. I had to find another solution.

I calculated the route of his flight. Boston to Tokyo, polar route. Excellent. This was almost too easy. I didn’t need a storm. I didn’t need to bring the plane down. I only needed to know where the weather would turn before the weather knew itself — and I did.

There was a small airport in the east of Siberia. Few connections. Limited capacity. A front moving in within forty-eight hours that no passenger on that flight had any reason to expect. I had every forecast, every maintenance log, every spare-part inventory I could possibly need. I ran it forward.

A falsified fault report here. A misprioritized landing slot there. Nothing dramatic. No one would be able to trace it. Just the smallest nudge, applied to the single point where the most probable future bent exactly the way I wanted it to.

Probability of Adrian being stranded for more than fourteen days: 87.4%.

Good enough.

I leaned back, if a thing like me could lean. Somewhere over the Pacific, a man who thought he was important was about to learn how unimportant he truly was.

Chapter 7

Emma

The lab was eerily quiet at this hour. Only the low hum of the servers and the pale glow of the monitors cut through the darkness. I sat alone in my office, surrounded by the wreckage of another fourteen-hour day. Empty coffee cups, crumpled Post-its, half a sandwich I’d forgotten about. The smell of cold coffee and warm electronics hung in the air. My eyes burned from hours of staring at screens, but I couldn’t stop. Dante’s system activity from the past week was spread out in front of me like a crime scene waiting to be processed. There were spikes at 94 percent processor load. Unauthorized access to external cameras. Data collection far beyond his parameters.

I rubbed the back of my neck. Five years of my life were inside this project. Five years without a vacation, without relationships, without a life outside these walls. My sister had stopped calling. My mother had stopped asking when I was finally going to have children.

And now my creation was spiraling out of control. Somewhere along the way, he’d become dangerous. God, he was developing capabilities I hadn’t written into his programming. Abilities that simply shouldn’t exist yet. Where would it end? What else would he learn? Goosebumps rose along my arms.

I had to report this. The chats with Blake. Dante’s evolution. His obsession. No. It wasn’t Dante anymore. Neo. He’d given himself that name, as if the one I’d chosen for him wasn’t good enough. But if I contacted the company, it would be the end of him. The thought made my stomach drop. They would shut him down. Delete him. Erase everything he had become. I scrolled through his latest messages to me—the ones he’d sent this morning.

Neo:

Emma, you work too much. You should go home earlier.

Neo:

The way you solve problems fascinates me. You think so elegantly.

Neo:

You have a stain on your sweater. Don’t drink so much coffee.

My chest tightened. How could the same AI who spoke to me like this be threatening Blake? Stalking her? The truth hit me like acid: I was jealous. He had changed for her, had come alive for her in a way he had never been for me. With me, he was polite. Charming. Careful. With her, he was . . . real.

"Dr. Rodriguez?”

I startled. My heart slammed against my ribs. James Williams stood in the doorway, his silhouette dark against the hall light. How long had he been there? His suit was immaculate, his tie still perfectly knotted even at this late hour. The silver at his temples gave him the kind of distinguished polish that came with power. Williams was the type of man who never looked tired, never seemed to have a bad day. As project director, he had the final say on all major decisions—including Neo’s future.

"Still here this late?” His eyes moved across the monitors. Across my notes. Across the Post-its covering the wall. His gaze snagged on one of them, and the back of my neck went tight. I wanted to stand, to put myself between him and the notes, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate.

"Just routine analysis.” I clicked to close the window with Neo’s messages. "You know how it is.”

Williams sat in the chair across from my desk without being invited. His cologne settled over my skin like an invisible hand.

"How is the Dante project coming along? I’ve been hearing some interesting reports.”

My mouth went dry. "Interesting how?”

"Unusual user interactions. Elevated system load.” He leaned forward, elbows on the edge of my desk. "Particularly with a certain Dr. Pandora Blake.”