The safehouse was a warehouse loft on the edge of the garment district, its windows painted black and its door reinforced with steel plating. It had been Axel's backup location for years—a place he'd never used, never mentioned, never even logged in his own encrypted records. It was the kind of place that existed only in the margins of a man's paranoia, and tonight it was home to a ghost.
Wren sat on a cot in the corner, her knees drawn up to her chest, her hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had long since gone cold. The shutdown signal had worked—the kill code was dormant, the trigger phrases silent—but the aftermath was its own kind of storm. Five years of fear and isolation and the constant, gnawing pressure of the programming didn't just vanish. It receded, leaving behind a raw, t
