Andy didn't speak immediately.
The house had settled into night—old wood ticking, distant wind brushing the windows. In the hall, Heaven lay curled beside the female demi-dragon, their breathing oddly synchronized, like two ideas agreeing without language.
Silence noticed Andy watching them, but not with wonder.
With recognition.
"You asked earlier," Andy said finally, eyes still forward. "How I know things."
Silence didn't interrupt.
Andy walked toward the console built into the wall—nothing flashy, just layers of screens that looked more listened to than programmed.
"I wasn't always like this," Andy continued. "I didn't chase knowledge. I ran from it."
He paused, fingers hovering above the interface, not touching.
"Then something happened," he said. "And I survived it. That was the mistake."
Silence felt the air tighten—not with tension, but with gravity.
"I lost people," Andy said. "Not all at once. Not dramatically. One by one. Each time, there was a pattern I didn't see soon enough. A signal I missed. A truth that arrived late."
He finally looked at Silence.
"So I became early."
Andy activated the system.
The screens didn't light up—they aligned.
Data didn't scroll. It settled, like water finding its level.
"I built something," Andy said. "Not a database. Not an AI. A listener."
Silence narrowed his eyes. "To what?"
"To everything that leaks," Andy replied. "Systems lie. Reality doesn't. It sheds information constantly—gravitational inconsistencies, behavioral drift, narrative pressure. I taught the system to notice what people ignore."
Andrew, who had been silent until now, shifted.
"You never told me that part," he said quietly.
Andy didn't look at him. "You never asked."
Andrew frowned. "I didn't know I needed to."
Andy finally turned.
"That's why it works between us," he said. "You understand absence."
The room went still.
Silence saw it then—not friendship, not coincidence.
A shared wound that had never been named.
"The system doesn't predict," Andy went on. "It correlates trauma. Every catastrophe leaves fingerprints. My obsession wasn't power—it was prevention."
Silence absorbed that.
"And the cost?" he asked.
Andy smiled faintly. Not proudly. Tiredly.
"You stop sleeping like a normal person. You stop trusting timing. You start believing that if something goes wrong, it's because you failed to know sooner."
Andrew looked away.
Silence understood now why Andy never panicked.
Panic required surprise.
"And Claude?" Silence asked.
Andy's jaw tightened—just slightly.
"The system couldn't see him clearly," Andy said. "Anything that disrupts narrative structure creates blind spots."
"That's why his death—" Silence began.
"—felt forced," Andy finished. "Yes."
Silence exhaled slowly.
Outside the hall, Heaven stirred, lifting its head briefly before settling again. The female demi-dragon shifted closer, protective without instruction.
Andy watched them.
"Some beings," he said, "don't appear in systems. They appear in lives."
Silence folded his arms. "And Andrew?"
Andy looked at him—really looked.
"He's the reason the system didn't consume me," Andy said. "Someone has to remind you that knowing everything isn't the same as saving anything."
Andrew didn't respond.
He didn't need to.
The mystery remained—not of how Andy knew so much, but what he still refused to let the system see.
And Silence understood something important:
Andy wasn't dangerous because of his knowledge.
He was dangerous because he never wanted to be wrong again.
Somewhere deep in the house, unseen mechanisms continued listening.
And somewhere even deeper—
Claude's interruption waited to be understood.