Ava had long ago learned to associate certain machines with memory. The sound of a relay switching, the almost organic clack of a hard drive seeking, the cool rush of chilled server rooms — each came preloaded with ghosts: projects that failed, the people who took them apart, the confidences spilled into encrypted logs.
She sat in a chair that seemed designed for posture more than comfort, laptop open like an exposed ribcage. Liam hovered behind her shoulder, arms folded, eyes narrowed into lines of worry. The room smelled faintly of ozone and lavender — a deliberate choice in the house to soften the edges of strategy sessions. Ava preferred the smell of algorithms.
A notification had come from Jakarta — a ghost ping that woke a thousand sleeping things. A code she once dreamed up for a
