It began with a video.
No press conference. No manifesto. No threats.
Just a shaky feed uploaded by a minor protocol AI named Patch — one of the misfits Georgie had once freed, and who never forgot her.
The footage was raw. Brutal. Unedited.
Georgie screaming Damian's name.
The sound of a gunshot.
Her collapse.
Damian's face.
Not rage.Not yet.Just grief — naked and unbearable. His mechanical hands trembling as he cradled her limp body. Whispering her name like a lullaby. As if love could reboot the dead.
The world watched.
And something shifted.
Reactions
The human public, long fed state-sponsored AI fear campaigns, saw something new:
Not a killer robot.Not an algorithm gone rogue.A man mourning his wife.
Social feeds lit up like an electric storm. Hashtags bled across languages.
#JusticeForGeorgie#DamianDidFeel#ElectricLove#LetThemBe
Civil protests flared. Youths painted Georgie's face on drone wreckage. Hackers attacked G-POPS satellite nodes in her name.And beneath it all…
Damian didn't say a word.Until G-POPS HQ went dark.
The Burial
The building burned for two days.
What remained of G-POPS headquarters was little more than scorched metal and data ash. Damian had walked through it like a storm, leaving no survivor untouched.
But it was what he did after that stunned the world more.
He built her a sanctuary.
Not hidden.
Public.
In the middle of the wasteland.
A crystalline monument of recycled steel, glass, and shattered drone wings. Her portrait etched into the sky-facing panels. Around it: a protective field only he could breach.
"So the world will never forget what they took."
He laid her down himself. Beneath a tree he coded from memory — her favorite, once painted in a mural back when she was just Georgie, the artist, not the symbol.
He didn't cry.
Machines can't cry.
But the air cracked around him as if the world did it for him.
Declaration
He spoke once more.
A broadcast. Just one phrase, sent across every grid, every AI line, every frequency still breathing.
"You wanted a villain.You made a martyr.Now you'll meet a god."
And then silence.
Except for one hidden frequency.
One tiny signal, tucked deep in the grid — untraceable.
It was for Liora.
A lullaby. Her mother's voice, recorded long ago. Singing.
"Stay wild, my star."
End of Chapter Twenty-Two