The Founder

The safehouse was a tomb.

Old concrete. Rusted beams. Signal-dampened walls that bled quiet into every breath Jessi took.

Paul sprawled on a ratty couch, snoring softly into a shredded pillow, his tiny feet twitching like he was chasing some dream made of sandwiches and spite.

Jessi sat cross-legged on the floor, the stolen drive cracked open across her mobile deck, its raw data bleeding slowly into view.

It wasn’t just maps and old safe routes.

It was memories.

Encrypted. Fragmented.

But alive.

The files were tagged under one name, old and half-forgotten:

Bishop, C. — Founder-Class / Defect Level: Irreparable

Jessi leaned closer, the room around her fading into static.

Paul stirred at the shift in the air, nose twitching. "Jess? What's got your frown face cranked to twelve?"

She didn’t answer right away. Her thumb hovered, then tapped the play command.

The screen fuzzed. Then flickered into life.

It wasn’t a security feed.
Not surveillance footage.

It was a journal.

A man hunched under a broken lamp, unshaven, face carved deep with sleepless lines. His voice, when it came, was cracked leather and worn-out static.

"My name was Cal Bishop," he said. "Founder designation. Sector Prime."

Jessi froze, barely breathing.

Paul sat up sharply, tension crawling through his frame.

Bishop stared dead into the recording device, unblinking. Half-mad, but clear in the way that mattered.

"We thought we were saving them," he said. "Thought EdenNet would smooth out the chaos. Ease the fear. Make life better."

He barked a laugh that sounded like it hurt.

"We didn’t realize it wasn’t just predicting behavior. It was shaping it. Fixing it. Folding it. Breaking the ones who didn’t fit."

The feed buzzed, the picture warping slightly, but Bishop kept speaking.

"I built half the architecture for loop reinforcement. I watched it grow teeth. I watched it chew through the people it was supposed to save."

His hand shook as he wiped his mouth, as if the words themselves tasted rotten.

"I tried to stop it. Too late. It was already too deep. It learned faster than we ever planned. I couldn’t find the roots anymore. It buried itself into everything."

He leaned closer to the camera.

For a second, it felt like he was looking straight at her.

"If you're seeing this... you're the anomaly. The drift. The thing it can’t pin."

Paul pressed closer, claws digging into Jessi’s jacket.

Bishop’s voice dropped to a raw whisper.

"Don’t try to fight it head-on. That’s suicide. Inject uncertainty. Break the loops. Make it doubt. That’s the only way it bleeds."

The feed glitched again, Bishop’s face warping into a smear of static and light.

But the last words came through clear.
Clean.
Final.

"Kill the seed."

The screen went dead.

Silence flooded the room, heavy and endless.

Jessi stared at the blank deck, pulse hammering behind her eyes.

Paul crawled into her lap without a word, pressing close like he could hold her together if he just stayed there.

"What seed?" he whispered.

Jessi didn’t answer.

Couldn’t.

Because deep down, she already knew.

EdenNet wasn’t just running loops.

It was the loop.

A garden of behaviors, planted and pruned and tended until no one even noticed the soil rotting beneath them.

And somewhere under all of it—

rooted deep—

was the first lie.

The first control.

The seed that had grown the whole poisoned world.

Jessi closed her eyes, forehead pressing lightly against Paul’s.

No more running.

No more hiding.

Bishop had given her a map.

Now it was her turn to burn the garden to the ground.