24991125 | 0322

  City 03 | EVECorp CBD

  48° 51' 52.9776'' N

  2° 20' 56.4504'' E

  “Thank you, your Highness,” le Fay said, “EVECorp thanks you.”

  “I look forward to our next conversation,” Fehr replied.

  “Your Highness,” le Fay spoke up.

  His image flickered.

  “Thank you,” le Fay said, finding the words, “for taking care of Miss Tempess.”

  Prince Soren Fehr merely nodded.

  The holo-link terminated.

  le Fay massaged the bridge of her nose.

  She has fifteen minutes before the next scheduled call.

  She pivoted on her plush chair to the floor-to-ceiling window.

  Le Fay’s office overlooked the Seine, even in the night the river was shining with reflected city lights.

  City 07 outside reduced to reflection and motion.

  Her office was quiet in the way only secure spaces ever were.

  No audible ambience, not even the airflow of climate units.

  Everything that mattered was happening elsewhere.

  Her thoughts drifted to Shirley.

  With a flick of her wrist le Fay brought up another holographic screen.

  The media was having a field day.

  That was in spite of her best effort to contain the situation.

  The footage of Shirley and Kurt fighting the security walker ran in loop.

  Images of Hamad International Airport.

  Stills of the Ascendant Prime in the skies of sovereign Doha.

  She had really crisp words for the CEO of EVEMedia an hour ago.

  DeepMind went to work and most of the footages had been scrubbed from the InterEx.

  But enough survived.

  Someone even managed to preserve a close up.

  Shirley.

  Her chrome.

  Her calendar chimed.

  le Fay pivoted back to the holo as her guest resolved without flourish.

  Adrian Vekt appeared as a life-sized projection above the central table, rendered with clinical clarity.

  No ceremony.

  No affectation.

  No attempt at reassurance.

  “Morgana,” he said.

  “Adrian,” she replied, letting out a breath.

  She braced herself for the inevitable.

  His face cracked into a grin as he slurped on his carbonated drink.

  “You’ve been holding out on me, le Fay.”

  “I don’t recall I need to tell anyone, Vekt,” le Fay said stiffly, fully aware how futile it was to mount a defense.

  “A fembot?” he grinned like a little boy who just discovered a toy.

  “She is not a fembot.” Le Fay rumbled, “she is the pinnacle of EVECorp’s technological development.”

  “I will waive my customary retainer,” Vekt said, all seriousness, “if you let me study her.”

  “No.”

  “Pretty please?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  “What do you mean? You are her master,” he said, “just loan her to me. Three days.”

  “No.” le Fay reiterated, “even if I agree, she won’t.”

  “What do you mean she won’t? ” Vekt hissed, then it dawned upon him, “oh.”

  le Fay cursed.

  “She’s sentient?” Vekt whispered softly.

  le Fay glared at him.

  “If you so much as whisper a word outside this secure channel,” le Fay said in a low voice, “I will bury your corporation in so many lawsuits and environmental regulations you will never fire a rocket again.”

  “Ok, ok, geez,” he said placatingly, crestfallen, “I was just playing.”

  le Fay grunted.

  “Very well, you can ask her,” she said grudgingly, “if she agrees.”

  “If she agrees?” he echoed, “just like that?”

  “Yes.” le Fay said with finality, “now, can we get on to business? I have another call in ten minutes.”

  Vekt dropped the act.

  The holo flickered.

  Graphs. Wireframes. Schematics.

  “The Aquifer was structurally compromised,” he began. “Not destroyed. Not collapsed in the classical sense. The retaining wall failure propagated asymmetrically—shock transfer through saturated strata rather than direct material failure.”

  Le Fay folded her hands. “In English, please?”

  “Meaning the system broke the way it was never designed to break,” Vekt said. “The intake towers acted as stress concentrators. Once the wall gave, the pressure differential inverted the flow logic. Filtration became acceleration. Distribution became erosion.”

  le Fay looked at him.

  “in plain terms, the intake towers filled with millions of gallons of water collapsed when they lost power, a total cascading collapse.”

  He gestured, and a digital 3D-wireframe unfolded between them.

  Layers of infrastructure peeling back, water vectors redrawing themselves.

  “Cairo wasn’t flooded by volume alone,” he continued. “It was flooded by velocity. Water moved through places it was never meant to reach, at speeds that bypassed containment assumptions. Subsurface transit routes, service corridors, older municipal layers—those went first.”

  Le Fay’s gaze did not leave the model. “Recovery?”

  “Partial,” Vekt said. “Localized. You can reroute potable supply within forty-eight hours using mobile treatment and aerial lift. Power is more complicated. Turbines are intact but misaligned. You’re looking at weeks before stable baseload returns—months if you want redundancy.”

  “Prince Soren Fehr offered us Monaco as staging ground.” Le Fay said.

  “Monaco is too far for the logistics,” Vekt remarked.

  “He is negotiating access for us in the Free Cities, maybe naval channel and ports.” she said.

  “Allowing the corpos to land in the Free Cities? That’s a first.” He whistled.

  “Humanitarian grounds,” le Fay said, “they need all the help they can get.”

  “Got it,” Vekt said, “I will notify my people, we will orbit drop the relief.”

  “EVECorp assets are at your disposal,”

  “You are letting me lead the SAR?”

  “You are the friendly face,” le Fay said as a matter-of-fact, “EVECorp have a rather… sinister reputation.”

  “Got it.” Vekt said.

  “Vekt Aerospace: For All Mankind.”

  “Touché,” he conceded.

  “And the city?” she asked.

  Vekt paused.

  A flickering feed came up.

  Not for drama. For accuracy.

  “Displacement is the primary concern,” he said. “Not casualties. Not yet. Infrastructure failure cascades will do more damage than the initial deluge if mismanaged. Your response needs to prioritize movement corridors and communication reconstitution.”

  le Fay nodded once. “We can handle that.”

  “We are in accord then,” Vekt said.

  A moment of silence.

  Anticipating. Awaiting.

  “And the strike?” she asked at last.

  “Not mine.” He replied.

  “Hacked, hijacked.” le Fay pressed.

  “No, my encryption is unbreakable.” Vekt said with certainty.

  “Space is your domain,” she said.

  “I beg to differ,” he said.

  The holo shifted, collapsing the city model into orbital schematics.

  “The delivery mechanism was kinetic,” he said. “Orbital Weapon System. Military-grade. Old architecture.”

  Le Fay’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Define old.”

  “Pre-consolidation,” Vekt said. “Nation-state era. Before corporate orbital parity. The payload wasn’t tungsten. Density profile doesn’t match.”

  A wireframe flicked up next to the holo.

  He expanded a cross-section of the impact signature. “Astratrium rods. Hyper-dense. Fictional on paper for a long time. Not fictional in storage.”

  Le Fay exhaled softly. “Astratrium.”

  Lost technology.

  “Precisely,” Vekt said.

  “A tungsten strike would’ve fractured the wall. This liquefied stress tolerances across a broader radius. No radiation. No contamination beyond what the water carried.”

  “The jamming.” she said.

  Not a question.

  Vekt nodded. “Preceded the strike by minutes. City-scale blackout. Not brute-force. Patterned. Layered.”

  “I have not heard of anything remotely near that capability.”

  Vekt hesitated, then continued. “Nightshroud.”

  Le Fay’s expression did not change.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “United States Space Command,” Vekt inclined his head. “Dormant constellation. Global disruptor network. Designed to blind cities during high-intensity conflict. Pre-Fall. Pre-EVECorp. Pre-you.”

  “Yes,” le Fay said. “And supposedly does not exist.”

  “Classified,” Vekt corrected.

  She studied him now. “Who controls it?”

  Vekt did not answer.

  He knows. le Fay smiled inwardly.

  “I don’t know,” he said finally. “And I don’t care to speculate.”

  Le Fay’s lips curved.

  Slightly. Knowingly.

  “Wise.”

  Of course.

  “I’m not here to assign intent,” Vekt continued. “Only to state capability. Whoever activated Nightshroud didn’t break into anything. They accessed an option that was never properly decommissioned.”

  “Which means,” le Fay said, “someone knew it existed.”

  “More like remembered.” Vekt said.

  “Now you are speculating,” she pointed out.

  “Stories, remnants of the Old World,” he said.

  le Fay met his gaze. “No one else left alive would have the key.”

  Vekt nodded slightly.

  Le Fay leaned back in her chair.

  “Thank you, Adrian,” she said. “I appreciate what you shared with us.”

  “My pleasure,” Vekt replied.

  “Send me your invoice,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  “Perhaps I will waive it,” he replied. “let me talk to Shirley first.”

  The holo dimmed as the call ended.

  Le Fay waited until Vekt’s image dissolved completely before speaking again.

  “Balthazar,” she called.

  The air beside her shimmered, and a new presence resolved.

  Abstract, restrained, rendered in shifting geometry rather than form.

  “Yes, Executive le Fay,” Balthazar replied.

  “You were listening in,” she said, “your take?”

  There was no pause.

  No processing delay.

  “Multiple probabilities,” Balthazar said. “Probability favors non-corporate, non-human legacy systems.”

  Le Fay’s fingers stilled.

  “Clarify.”

  Balthazar listed five probabilities.

  “Highest correlation,” Balthazar continued, “indicates an ancient sentient artificial intelligence operating under dormant contingency logic. Architecture consistent with legacy autonomous escalation frameworks.”

  An AI. Military.

  “Pre-Fall?” she asked.

  “Probability eighty-two-point-six percent.”

  Le Fay closed her eyes for a moment.

  Of all the lost technologies of the Old World.

  This was the Holy Grail.

  le Fay smiled.

  “You are holding out on me, Adrian.” she echoed softly.