Chapter 34: The Man Behind the System
Emberlight was quiet.
Too quiet.
Cyan stood at the edge of the control hub, the heart of everything that had once owned them. Power conduits hummed beneath glass floors, data towers rising like monuments to certainty.
"He's here," Cyan said. "Vale never runs."
As if summoned, the lights shifted. A single figure emerged from the shadows.
Dr. Adrien Vale.
No guards. No drones.
Just him.
"You've dismantled decades of work," Vale said calmly. "Do you feel accomplished?"
Mira met his gaze without flinching. "We dismantled a lie."
Vale sighed, almost disappointed. "You were designed to transcend humanity. Emotion was your flaw."
Mira stepped closer. "No. It was our proof."
Cyan accessed the terminal behind Vale, fingers flying. "Every backup you made is gone. Every override stripped. The system doesn't answer to you anymore."
For the first time, Vale's composure cracked.
"You think this ends with me?" he said sharply. "People will always build systems like this."
"Maybe," Mira replied. "But they'll remember what happened when you did."
Sirens echoed—not alarms, but evacuation signals. Emberlight personnel were leaving. The system was collapsing from the inside out.
Vale laughed softly. "Then history will decide who was right."
Mira watched him turn away, smaller now, just a man without a machine.
This wasn't vengeance.
It was exposure.
And Emberlight was finished.