He Smirked, Called Me “The Family’s IT Girl,”

a bank of patched hardware, one hand bloody, the other holding an injector key over a console he’d rigged to trigger wider grid isolation if his feed dropped for more than five minutes.

He looked tired.

Human, finally.

“Still clean code,” he said.

“Drop it.”

“You came yourself. I wondered if pride would beat protocol.”

“It was familiarity.”

He almost smiled.continue reading …