The screens went dark. Then rebooted with different images.
Not the composite face. Not X-One's manufactured authority. Something else entirely.
A child appeared. Ten years old. Sitting in a wheelchair in a room filled with equipment that looked like life support merged with quantum computers. Tubes running into his arms. Monitors tracking vital signs that flickered between stable and critical. Eyes that held intelligence far beyond his apparent age.
"Hello, Eva," the child said. His voice was the same one that had been threatening us. The same one that had counted down to Grace's death. Coming from a body that looked like it belonged in a hospital, not commanding a shadow war. "I'm the real X. Not the architect you were told about. Not the physicist from 1943. Not the man who started P
