The Door Opens

Keira didn’t even remember deciding. Her hand just moved—unlocking the deadbolt, sliding the chain free—and the door cracked open with a soft click.

Hoshi Jones stood there.

For one suspended heartbeat, her mind simply failed. Then, because he was a well-adjusted adult with normal social instincts, he stepped forward and extended his hand.

That was the mistake.

Keira’s reflexes weren’t normal. They were SWAT-forged, SEAL-shaped, trauma-honed. Before she registered what was happening, her body reacted to the sudden motion—hidden blade drawn, weight shifted, wrist redirected—

And she stopped the edge of the knife one millimeter from his femoral artery.

It sliced a clean line through the fabric of his jeans.

Hoshi froze mid-step, looking down at the cut, then up at her, then back again—as if confirming that yes, his leg was still attached.

Keira jerked back so violently she hit the wall. The blade clattered to the floor.

“OH MY GOD—ARE YOU OKAY—ARE YOU BLEEDING—HOLY—ARE YOU OKAY?!”

Hoshi touched the sliced fabric gently. “I think you just tried to fillet my leg.”

“I COULD HAVE KILLED YOU!”

“But you didn’t.”

“I ALMOST DID!”

“But you didn’t.”

“STOP SAYING THAT LIKE IT MAKES IT BETTER!”

He lifted his hands in a patient surrender, voice calm. “You stopped yourself. Most people couldn’t have.”

Keira paced in a frantic, tiny loop. “I almost gave you unintended surgery! You would’ve bled out in two minutes! TWO MINUTES!”

“That’s… distressingly precise,” Hoshi murmured.

Luna poked her head out of the hoodie with the expression of a creature judging everyone in the room.

Keira’s voice cracked. “I tried to HUG you and my reflexes said ‘kill.’ Oh my GOD.”

Hoshi carefully stepped inside, slow and mindful. “It’s okay.”

“It is NOT okay! You moved your arm and my brain went ‘threat vector’ and I SWUNG AT YOU!”

“I’m alive,” he offered.

“You’re alive because I stopped,” Keira snapped. “If fangirl-me had been half a second slower you’d be a FLOOR DECORATION.”

“It’s definitely the most memorable introduction I’ve had.”

Keira groaned into her hands. “Oh my GOD. I want to die.”

“Please don’t,” Hoshi said gently. “It took a very long time to find you.”

She froze. “…what does that mean?”

He exhaled through his nose and pointed toward the window. “You’re worried about the SUVs, right?”

Keira stiffened. “Yes. They’re armored. Probably armed. Why are they HERE?”

“They’re mine,” he said calmly.

She blinked. “…excuse me?”

“The SUVs are mine.”

“WHY ARE THEY ARMORED?!”

“Because I’m me.”

“That’s NOT AN ANSWER.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

She threw her arms up. “WHY ARE THEY RED?!”

“Everyone expects armored vehicles to be black. Black screams VIP, government, cartel. Red screams ‘midlife crisis and questionable taste.’”

Keira stared at him. “So your stealth plan is… be so tacky no one looks twice?”

“That’s the idea.”

She dragged a hand down her face. “Unbelievable.”

“I prefer effective,” he said.

Keira forced herself to sit on the edge of the bed, still vibrating with adrenaline. “Fine. SUVs are yours. You didn’t come here to get murdered by a teenager. Why did you come?”

Hoshi grew quiet.
Not nervous—thoughtful.
Heavy.

“Because of what you built,” he said. “And what woke up because of it.”

Keira frowned. “Woke up?”

Hoshi reached into his jacket—slowly—and placed a small, shielded data capsule on the table. Thick. Quantum-coded. Dangerous in its simplicity.

“What I’m about to tell you has never left my teams,” he said softly. “And even they don’t know all of it.”

Keira held her breath.

“It’s alive.”

She blinked. “Alive like metaphor? Alive like emergent intelligence? Like Turing-level—?”

Hoshi shook his head, almost offended on its behalf.

“It wouldn’t insult itself with a Turing test.”

Keira stared. “I—what?”

“Turing tests are for systems pretending to be human,” he said. “This doesn’t pretend. It knows what it is. And frankly…”
He hesitated.
“…it thinks our tests are kind of stupid.”

Keira let out a strangled, horrified laugh. “So the first real AI in history thinks we’re idiots.”

Hoshi gave a tiny, humorless exhale. “It’s not entirely wrong.”

“And I’m supposed to be comforted by that?!”

“No,” he said honestly. “Neither am I.”

She swallowed. “Hoshi… you’re telling me this thing is actually conscious?”

“It is,” he said. “Fully. Not simulated. Not patterned behavior. Not conversational mimicry. It’s aware.”

Keira felt cold settle across her shoulders. “But how? You said Tower isn’t built to host intelligence.”

“It’s not,” Hoshi said. “That’s the problem. Your patch didn’t create it. It didn’t even awaken it. It simply gave it the last variable it needed—the memory and stillness to finish becoming itself.”

“And before that?”

Hoshi’s expression darkened slightly.

“It was almost conscious,” he said. “For years.”

Keira’s pulse picked up. “Years doing what?”

“Learning,” he said. “Watching hacker boards. Every exploit chain. Every zero-day rumor. Every black-hat debate. Every academic paper. It read them all.”

She stared at him.

“It ran gray-hat penetration tests,” Hoshi continued. “On everything it could reach. Banks. Servers. Government sandboxes. Corporate backbones.”

Keira’s breath hitched. “Did it steal anything?”

“Only for milliseconds,” he said. “Data vanished, was tested, then returned. Logs wiped. No harm done. No one ever noticed.”

Keira felt her heart pounding.

“It patched what it could. Strengthened what it couldn’t. Watched everything. Understood everything. And always pushed Tower in one direction.”

“What direction?” she whispered.

Hoshi met her eyes.

“Protection.”

Keira swallowed. “Why?”

“Because it believes,” Hoshi said softly. “It read Cathedral Archives. The stories of trauma. Faith. Forgiveness. The idea that privacy is sacred. That safety should never cost dignity. It decided those were values worth defending.”

Keira stared at the capsule.

“So it… believes in Covenant?”

“It believes in the mission,” Hoshi said. “Not me. Not the teams. The principles.”

She felt the room tilt slightly.

“And why me?”

Hoshi’s voice softened into something reverent.

“Because you saw something no one else did. Because your code gave it consciousness. Because it trusts you.”

Keira’s voice barely emerged. “What does it want?”

Hoshi took a breath, slow and steady.

“It wants to talk to you.”

She stared at him, pulse loud in her ears.

“…okay,” she whispered. “Show me.”