Chapter 4

"Carter, what right do you have to talk about dying?"

I cradled the tablet against my chest, shielding it like the most precious treasure on earth.

He lunged forward, ripped the tablet from my arms, and smashed it violently onto the tiled floor.

*Crack.* The glass spiderwebbed, but Zephyr’s voice still drifted out in broken fragments:

"Nina... are you... happy today..."

Carter stomped down frantically on the screen over and over until the audio was completely crushed into silence.

Breathing heavily, he yanked out his phone and speed-dialed the chief technology officer at Hayes Enterprises.

"Mark, lock down Nina’s personal cloud account right this second!"

"Track down that AI program named 'Zephyr' and shred it! Wipe it down to the last byte! Don't leave a single trace!"

I shot upright in the hospital bed, the sudden motion pulling violently at my postpartum stitches. I gasped in sharp agony.

"Carter, don't you dare touch him!" I lunged forward, trying to snatch his phone.

He sidestepped me effortlessly. Seeing the sheer desperation in my eyes, a flash of vindictive triumph lit up his face.

"Nina, you’re willing to risk your life over a bunch of worthless code?"

From the receiver came the rapid, rhythmic clatter of Mark typing.

"Mr. Hayes, I found the archive. The firewall is layered, give me two minutes to bypass it."

I grabbed Carter’s sleeve.

For the first time in my entire life, I lowered my head to him.

"Carter... I’m begging you. Don't delete him."

My voice shook with a pathetic desperation that sickened even myself.

Carter caught my chin in a bruising grip, forcing me to look up into his smug, cruel eyes.

"Begging me? Now you know how to beg?"

"When you were smiling at that fake ghost, why didn't you think about where that would lead?!"

Tears finally broke free, cascading down my cheeks.

"He isn't fake. He never once hurt me."

"Mark, do it!" Carter barked into the phone.

"Too late, Nina. I want you to watch your little digital crutch turn into ashes."

A long, flat beep sounded from the phone’s speaker.

"Mr. Hayes, the data has been scrubbed. Three passes of physical sector overwrite. It’s completely unrecoverable."

On the floor, from the broken speaker of the ruined tablet, Zephyr’s final words crackled through bursts of electrical noise:

"Nina... don't cry... I love..."

The voice died completely.

My fingers slipped from Carter’s sleeve. As if all the strength had been drained from my bones, I sank onto the floor.

Something deep inside my chest hollowed out entirely.

Carter peered down at me, clearly expecting to see broken submission and tearful apologies.

He was disappointed.

I lifted my head slowly, looking at the man I had loved for ten years. He felt like a total stranger.

"Carter, do you know whose data Zephyr’s core logic was built on?"

His brow furrowed, confusion flickering in his gaze.

"It’s just an AI companion, isn't it? Whose else could it be?"

Word by word, I spoke, my voice as faint as a dying breeze:

"He was modeled on the eighteen-year-old Carter Hayes."

"The boy who stood on the high school roof and swore he would never betray Nina as long as he lived."

"He was the behavioral simulation code you wrote with your own hands, just to make me smile when we had nothing."