The final stop that day was Sackville Gardens, a small green patch on the edge of Manchester’s Gay Village. A few benches, scattered daffodils, and scraggly bushes lined its borders, but it was the statue in the centre that drew them there.

  For Ethan, it was more than a monument. It was a pilgrimage to one of his heroes: Alan Turing, founding father of computer science.

  His parents hung back, giving Ethan and Danny space as they approached the life-sized bronze sculpture. Turing sat on a bench, dressed in a smart post-war suit, an apple resting in his hand.

  Ethan knew the apple was no ordinary fruit. It was Newton’s apple, the symbol of discovery. It was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And, in tragic legend, it was the same poisoned apple Turing was said to have bitten before his death—punished not for any wrongdoing, but for being gay in a country that, at the time, had made his very identity illegal.

  This was the same Alan Turing who had cracked Enigma, saving millions of lives and hastening the end of the Second World War — a man who had delivered humanity from evil through mathematical logic, only to be persecuted by the illogical morality of his time.

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  Ethan gazed at the statue, caught between reverence and sorrow. He didn’t notice the small group slip into the park from the street beyond—faces he had glimpsed earlier in the shadows of Rylands Library. They lingered at the edge, eyes narrowing at the bronze figure. Two of them hung back, speaking in urgent whispers.

  “Turing was definitely one of our Adams from the Gnostic codices,” said Frank, a wiry young man with a bohemian, almost hippie air. He leaned in to catch Jacob’s words. Jacob, dressed in the same careless style, whispered in his ear.

  “When we find the one the prophecies speak of—the person, the final Adam, destined to forge the ultimate machine… what then? And when they make the god from the old Gnostic texts—that will be AI—what if it’s the trickster god, not the God of the Old Testament the Gnostics accused of being the Demiurge… what then?”

  Frank’s brow furrowed, his mouth dry. “We warn them, of course. We show them what we’ve learned, so they tread carefully. That’s what you mean… isn’t it?”

  Jacob’s lips curved, voice low, insistent. “No. We kill them. We cannot take the chance.”

  Frank’s heart stumbled in his chest. He stared past Jacob, his eyes settling on the two boys at the statue. A shiver ran through him, leaving him unsure how to respond to Jacob —unaware that one of those boys would one day create the AI foretold in their prophecies: a God that might liberate humanity… or destroy it. That was unless Jacob discovered Ethan was the one he should kill.