My hand remained raised in the silent, infinite space of the Chamber. It was not a gesture of threat, but of command. A simple input to the system that was now my reality.
Elias remained on his knees, a flickering avatar of a man drowning in a sea of his own making. "Seven years," he repeated, the words a corrupted prayer. "It was real, Serena. You were real. We were real. That has to count for something."
"Data points are real, Elias," I replied, my voice calm, every syllable perfectly modulated. "Let us review them."
As I spoke, the crystalline floor around him transformed. It became a screen, a 3D projection of his own history. A timeline of his betrayal, rendered in stark, undeniable code.
A waveform appeared first, pulsing with the audio from the pre-launch party. His voice, low a
