The core room of the Helix Lab felt less like a room and more like an altar. Light bled out of the walls from surfaces nobody could see, and the hum of servers lined the air like prayers muttered in an unknown tongue. The chair — when he first saw it — was less a piece of furniture than a piece of fate designed by someone with taste for the dramatic.
Seven stood before him like a prophet in a cathedral constructed from code and silicon. He wore his calm like armor — a man who had learned to make tenderness look like calculation. Around them, the console pulsed, waiting for an authorized neural key. The code hummed, expecting Gabriel’s DNA to complete the circuit.
“You were always the interesting one,” Seven said. “Your mother used you like she used me. She builds empires on secrets and b
