Novel

Chapter 10: The Architect's Fall

Vane storms the basement uplink chamber and confronts Elias and Jia at the kill-switch. He reveals years of patient deletions and confesses orchestrating Elias’s past whistleblowing failure. He offers a massive payout and clean slate to stop the internal broadcast. Elias refuses, embracing redemption. Jia triggers a feedback loop to blind security feeds. The upload reaches 99 % as security breaches the door, tightening the final bottleneck.