Chapter 9 - The Ghost in the Machine
Sarah did not step back. She slowly turned, shifting Leo so that her own back shielded him completely. Her eyes, illuminated by the green interface of her wrist tablet, were entirely devoid of fear.
""An asset?"" Sarah said, her voice dropping into a register that made Proctor Vance's trigger finger pause. ""You think you own him because an equation told you his visibility wasn't high enough?""
""He is property of the State Engagement Pool,"" the Proctor stated, stepping forward with the taser held steady in both hands. ""You built this system, Vance. You wrote the root algorithms for emotional indexing twenty years ago. You know the law: an unmonitored human is a resource wasted. Hand him over.""
""I wrote the code to connect people,"" Sarah said coldly. ""You turned it into a slaughterhouse for attention.""
With a swift tap of her thumb against the wrist tablet, Sarah initiated a cascading execution script. The terminal Vance held at her hip suddenly hissed, emitting a thin coil of gray smoke as its lithium cell melted. Vance dropped it with a cry of pain, shaking her burned fingers.
Simultaneously, the large display screen on the wall behind them flared with brilliant white light. The video feed was still active, but Sarah had rerouted the camera's output not just to the municipal sector, but to every terminal, billboard, and personal device across the continent.
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""Look at the camera, Proctor,"" Sarah said softly, pointing toward the hovering lens that was now transmitting their exact conversation to two hundred million people. ""Tell the audience why a three-year-old child had to be terrorized to meet your quarterly margin.""
Proctor Vance turned pale, staring into the unblinking eye of the camera, completely paralyzed by the realization that she had just become the most hated face in the civilized world.
