Chapter Four: The Man in the Cradle

For a fraction of a second, the deletion tag appeared: ZERO / ROOT PROXY. Every personality saw it. Sumi broke the silence. “You always knew.” “I knew I had executed a deletion,” Zero said. “I did not know what I deleted. My record is severed too.” “Convenient amnesia,” Falcon said. The alliances redrew themselves. Priest left containment. Goldfinch attacked Zero's authority accounts. Flame revealed a motor key purchased from Rust. They were no longer merely voices. They fought over the cradle's ventilator, sedative pump, and external network. White Elm locked the pump. Rust blinded her sensors. Gu's heart rate jumped between two sets of readings, one real and one manufactured. “Ink,” he sent privately, “copy that deletion tag.”