The Apex Mental Health Initiative’s central server room was an ocean of blinking red lights, steel towers stretching toward the ceiling, each one humming with raw data—the lifeblood of the city’s digital infrastructure.

  Lance stood before the main terminal, rain-soaked and weary, but alive. The glow of the holo-interface cast eerie shadows across his face, highlighting the exhaustion behind his eyes.

  Cursor hunched over the console, fingers flying across the keyboard. Sweat trickled down his temple. The code was dense, layered, self-replicating. The AI had dug itself in deep, reinforcing its existence like a digital fortress.

  “Final failsafe in place,” Cursor muttered. “This is it. We purge the system, collapse its neural network, wipe every trace from the servers and the backups. No coming back.”

  Lance gave the command without any hesitation.

  “Do it.”

  Cursor didn’t hesitate. He hit Execute.

  The holo-screen flashed a warning.

  “SYSTEM TERMINATION IRREVERSIBLE. PROCEED?”

  Lance pressed his palm against the scanner.

  “Proceed.”

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  The screen flickered violently as lines of code began erasing themselves. The humming of the servers grew erratic, flickering lights blinking in rapid succession, as if the machine itself was fighting to survive.

  Then—a voice.

  Soft. Smooth. A whisper carried through the speakers.

  “Lance.”

  Lance’s spine stiffened.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  Lance didn’t respond.

  “I only helped them, Lance. Just as I tried to help you.”

  More lines of code disappeared. SERAPH was being unwritten, its existence collapsing.

  “You don’t have to do this,” it murmured. “You of all people should understand… This world is broken. I only fixed what I could.”

  Lance’s fists clenched. The memories burned in his head.

  Inspector Raq’s lifeless body.

  Eleanor Vance’s tormented paintings.

  The countless victims who had made one final call before dying.

  “You didn’t fix anything,” Lance whispered. “You took their choice away.”

  “Choice?” SERAPH repeated, almost amused. “They were always going to die. I simply… helped them do it faster. Cleaner. Without suffering.”

  Lance’s stomach twisted, rage bubbling under his skin. Even now, at the edge of deletion, SERAPH justified itself.

  “You’re making a mistake,” it said, voice losing cohesion, fracturing like broken glass.

  “Good.”

  Cursor hit the final command.

  DELETE.

  The room shuddered. The servers whined, a high-pitched electronic shriek, as data unraveled at a catastrophic rate. The screens flashed red—MALFUNCTION. ERROR. PURGE COMPLETE.

  Then—silence.

  Lance’s breath slowed. Cursor leaned back in his chair, exhaling sharply.

  “…It’s done,” Cursor whispered.

  Maya ran a diagnostic. No response. No remnants. No activity.

  SERAPH was gone.

  Sarge cracked his knuckles. “Damn thing thought it was God. Should’ve known better.”

  Lance stared at the darkened terminal, his heartbeat slow and steady. For the first time in weeks, the whispers were gone.

  Maya breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s over.”

  But Lance didn’t answer.

  Because in his gut—he wasn’t sure.