Page 10 of Fourth

“And you’re clinging to rules you stopped following the moment you stepped into this room.”

Their words snapped back and forth like sparks, bright, volatile, each one striking too close to something vital. It wasn’t just banter anymore. It was a clash of identity, and something else neither of them wanted toname.

Then silence. Thick. Heavy.

Was it just defiance? Not entirely. Part of her needed to see what lay beneath all that composure, if therewasanything beneath it. Was he just programming and pride? She needed to know if there was a crack in the armor. If anything in him could break. Because if it could, then maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t entirely powerless in thisroom.

The tension bristled between them, pressing against her skin like static, laced with every unspoken word, every unanswered question. The balance of power shifted breath bybreath, sharp and precarious. Command. That was what he worshipped. What held him upright.

But mastery wasn’t what she sawnow.

“Why,” she whispered, “do you look like your curiosity is about to override your orders?”

He froze.

Just for a second. But it was enough.

Maya leaned in as far as her restraints allowed, voice low, steady now. “You’re not supposed to experience anything, are you? That’s what they made you for. Cold. Efficient. No second guesses.” A sudden thought slammed into her, sharp and impossible to ignore. “Are you a machine? Is that what this is?”

She didn’t mean it as an insult. It came out as something closer to awe. Because if he was, then he was broken. And if he wasn’t… that was even harder to explain.

His expression didn’t change right away, but something flickered in the darkness of his eyes. Apause. Ahesitation. Then, finally, he answered.

“I am not machine. Iwas born, flesh, bone, memory. Amother. Abeginning. But I was altered. Genetically shaped to serve the Intergalactic Warrior caste. Trained to follow its codes. Conditioned to obey its rules. That is what they made of me. But I am not a construct. Nor am I artificial.”

He said it like someone repeating a forgotten truth, one rarely visited, half-remembered. There was no offense in his voice. No pride either. Just fact, unflinching, emotionlessfact.

Maya studied him, something twisting deep in her gut. “You’re not just following orders anymore, are you?”

He stayed silent for a breath, then said flatly, “I do not have an answer for that.” His voice was quieter now, stripped of its usual substance. “There is no protocol for this kind of interaction. You are not behaving as expected.”

Maya leaned in slightly, not missing the tension laced between each word. “So what does your programming tell you to do with unexpected variables? Dissect them? Eliminate them? Or do you just stare at them and hope they solve themselves?”

He blinked once, deliberate and composed, assessing her with the stillness of a man used to commanding outcomes. Then again, slower, less detached, more deliberate. The second blink lingered, his gaze sharpening. No trace of uncertainty, only the press of judgment, focus, strategy. He looked at her not like a subject or threat, but like an equation that refused to balance. “I observe. Iadapt. Ieliminate risk.”

“And am I a risk now?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, and then after a pause, “but not for the reasons I expected.”

“Then why haven’t you moved? Why are you still standing here like I’ve said something you don’t know how to process?” Her heart thudded. “What did they forget to program into you, Riven?”

He exhaled slowly. Not a sigh. Something more regulated. But she saw it, the fracture.

And he didn’t leave.

She caught the struggle flickering in his eyes. Caught the thing he tried to suppress. Not anger. Not duty. Something taut and fierce, straining beneath the surface. Authority still lingered in his stance, but it was shaken, like he was fighting need with discipline and barely keeping it caged.

She should have been afraid. Should have shut her mouth, quieted her pulse, stopped baiting the unstable, armored weapon standing inches from her. But fear, real, paralyzing fear, was something she’d already lived through.

She remembered walking into Anya’s empty apartment, heart pounding, knowing something was wrong the moment the silence answered her call. That was fear. This? This was different. This was a storm of fury and disbelief, twisted with a sliver of something else she didn’t want toname.

Because in that crack, that moment where his certainty failed, she saw something she understood. Doubt.

“You think you are unpredictable,” he said at last, voice low. “But you are not chaos. You are interference. Unmapped. Unreadable. My systems cannot make sense of you. And I do not like what that suggests.”

Maya tilted her head slightly, eyes locked on his. “You really don’t know what to make of me, doyou?

The words didn’t come with heat or bite. They were quiet. Measured. And they landed with more weight than she intended. For the first time since waking in this chamber, she wasn’t the one being studied, but the one holding the scalpel. She let the silence stretch.

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