Chapter 18 - THE ALGORITHM OF MERCY
I stepped out from the shadows of the server racks, my footsteps echoing softly on the raised metal floor.
"You left a backdoor open in your packet routing, Seven," I said quietly, keeping my hands visible to show I posed no threat.
The boy stopped typing. He didn't jump or reach for a weapon. He simply turned his head slowly, his pale, sharp eyes locking onto mine.
"Detective Miller," he said, his voice flat and devoid of surprise. "You are outside your jurisdiction. And your access vector violates three separate federal confidentiality statutes."
"I don't care about the statutes," I said, walking closer until I stood just a few feet away from the console. I looked down at the screens, watching lines of code representing billions of dollars in illicit offshore accounts being systematically frozen and redirected to global humanitarian funds. "You're not just auditing corporate thieves, are you? You're redistributing what they steal."
Unit Seven turned back to the screen, watching a transaction complete with a soft chime.
"Capital accumulation is a zero-sum equation," the boy recited, sounding less like a child and more like an economic philosophy textbook. "When corruption creates a deficit in society, the ledger must balance. Westbridge was designed to protect the system. I have optimized it to heal it."
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"At what cost, Seven?" I asked, kneeling down so I was eye-level with him. "They turned you into a machine. They took your name, your family, your childhood. Is this all you're ever going to be? A ghost watching screens in the dark?"
For the first time, the boy's fingers froze completely over the glass keys. A profound, heavy silence filled the subterranean chamber.
