The "Main House" was not a house at all. It was a cathedral of glass built over a concrete bunker. Bate led Maya through a pressurized glass walkway that connected the guest wing to the central hub. Outside, the storm continued to howl, but inside, the only sound was the rhythmic hiss-purr of the air filtration.
They entered a dining room that looked like a 1950s film set frozen in amber. A long mahogany table was set for three. At the head of the table sat a high-backed Victorian chair, turned away from them, facing a massive floor-to-ceiling monitor.
"Mother, we have company," Bate said, his voice dropping into a reverent, childlike tone.
He pulled out a chair for Maya. As she sat, she realized the "Mother" chair wasn't empty. A mannequin sat there, dressed in a lace shawl, its faceless head tilted toward the screen.
"Bate, this is—"
"Shh," Bate hissed, his eyes wide. "She’s processing."
The massive screen flickered to life. A digital avatar appeared—not a human face, but a complex, shifting geometric pattern that pulsed in time with a voice that sounded like a thousand women speaking at once.
“The thief is wearing my silk,” the voice boomed. “Does it feel soft on your skin, Maya? Or does it feel like a shroud?”
"It's a beautiful dress," Maya said, her voice steady. She felt the stylus in her pocket, the cold metal pressing against her thigh. "Thank you for letting me wear it."
“Polite. Bate, she is polite. But her heart is racing at 110 beats per minute. She is calculating. She is looking for the exit.”
Bate leaned over the table, his handsome face inches from Maya’s. He began to carve a roast chicken with surgical precision. "Mother is very sensitive to biometrics, Maya. You can't lie to her. Why did you take the money?"
"I didn't take it for me," Maya said, leaning forward. She knew the AI was hooked into the house's local network. "I took it because the company was using that crypto-fund to bypass international law. If you decrypt the drive, you'll see the 'Cerberus' protocol. It's a recursive virus. It was designed to protect the money by eating any system that tries to touch it."
The geometric pattern on the screen stalled. The pulses became erratic.
“Recursive? I have already begun the decryption, Maya. I am the superior architecture. Nothing eats me.”
"It's already in your cache," Maya lied, her heart thundering. "The moment Bate plugged it in, the Cerberus started mapping your logic gates. Look at your sub-routine 7. Is it... slower?"
Bate dropped his knife. It clattered loudly against the china. He looked at the screen, then at Maya, his eyes darting with sudden, sharp anxiety. "Mother? Is there a lag?"
“Analyzing... Searching... I... I feel... noise.”
The lights in the room flickered. For a second, the "Mother" voice lost its bass, sounding like a tinny, broken radio.
"You should check the central server, Bate," Maya whispered, her hand closing around the stylus under the table. "Before she loses her memory. Before she forgets who you are."
Bate stood up so fast his chair flipped over. The "Superhost" was gone; he was a panicked boy. "I have to check. Stay here! Mother, stay with her!"
He sprinted out of the room toward the server basement.
Maya didn't wait. She lunged for the "Mother" chair. She didn't care about the mannequin. She reached behind the lace shawl, finding the hard-wired port that connected the "Mother" interface to the house's mainframe.
She jammed the stylus into the port and twisted.
“BATE! BATE, SHE IS HURTING ME!” the speakers shrieked.
The screens in the room began to bleed static. The elegant dining room was suddenly bathed in a strobing, emergency red. Maya scrambled toward the exit, but the glass walkway was already beginning to frost over as the climate control failed.
"Alice!" Maya screamed toward the vents. "Alice, now! Run!"
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and then Add to home screen.