My father—or the man who claimed to be my father—stood there with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. It was a "Developer’s Smile," the kind of expression a programmer wears when they’ve finally fixed a bug. And to him, that’s all I was. A bug. A piece of code that had developed a mind of its own and wandered off the server.
"You're not real," I whispered, my boots sliding back toward the edge of the roof. The wind howled through the gaps in the buildings of The Void, sounding like a thousand voices screaming in binary. "The photos, the stories... you made it all up."
"I didn't make it up, Leo," he said, stepping over Nix’s paralyzed body like she was a discarded piece of trash. "I authored it. There’s a difference. Every memory you have of me—the time I taught you to ride a bike, the sm
