Chapter Twenty five: Echo Protocol

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• His To Take   Chapter Thirty Three: When the Silence Breaks Back

  The silence didn’t last.It never does.Not when truth hits that hard, that fast.For two hours, the world sat stillwatching, replaying, wondering if what they heard was real.Then VX moved.And when they did, they didn’t stumble.They struck.At 03:19 GMT, a VX-linked platform released a statement.Simple. Short. Surgical.“Seraphina Locke has been safely located and is currently receiving care.All unsanctioned transmissions are being investigated.Please disregard impersonation content.”Attached was a photograph.Seraphina Locke Rowensitting in a garden.Soft light. Bright eyes. A cup of tea.Smiling.Controlled.Perfect.Fake.Nova cursed loud enough to make the whole comms bay jump.“Goddamn deepfake team’s faster than I thought.”Lyra paced, jaw tight. “They’re using her name again. Her face. Like it’s a brand.”03 didn’t speak.She was already pulling apart the image metadata.Within seconds, she flagged seven-layer inconsistencies.Lighting mismatch. Shadow direction off. M

• His To Take   Chapter Thirty Two: Crack the Feed

  VX scheduled their global summit for maximum optics.Hosted in Zurich, streamed in real time across six continents, the event was built to be sleek, clean, and untouchable. Nothing controversial. Nothing messy. Just experts. Product demonstrations. Testimonials.A rebranding exercise dressed up as philanthropy.And at the center of it all: a keynote on “responsible innovation in human-centered AI.”But the team at the Lyon compound had other plans.The relay room was a storm of static and urgency.Nova hunched over a terminal rerouting packet headers. 03 was writing a delay loop to stall VX’s built-in crash failsafe. Lyra traced radio frequencies from three fallback uplinks in case the hijack attempt got kicked mid-broadcast.And at the center of it all, Rowen stood in front of a camera.Alone.No makeup. No lighting. Just the truth, and the terror of telling it.Ava checked the feed pipeline one last time.“We’ve got 14 seconds from breach to lock-in. If they reroute, we’ll have mayb

• His To Take   Chapter Thirty One: The Name You Choose

  The first time someone called her Rowen without flinching, she almost didn’t respond.Not because she didn’t hear it.But because some part of her still didn’t believe she was allowed to.It happened at breakfast. Nova passed her a battered metal mug filled with something bitter and hot, then muttered, “Here, Rowen.”No hesitation. No sarcasm. Just said it like it was already normal.Rowen stared at the cup for a second too long before finally nodding.“Thanks.”Nova didn’t respond. Just walked off like it was no big deal.But Rowen stood there for a full minute, fingers tight around the handle, her chest buzzing with something she couldn’t name.It wasn’t joy.It wasn’t pride.It was more like recognition.People didn’t soften to her overnight.Lyra still avoided her. 03 still studied her like a probability chart. And Mika seemed permanently skeptical, every smirk carrying the weight of a girl who’d been hurt too many times to believe anything polished was safe.But cracks started to

• His To Take   Chapter Thirty: No One’s V ersion

  The sky was grayer than she expected.Not dramatic. Not stormy.Just real.The way colors looked when no one was trying to market them.Sera stepped off the transport in the early hours of morning, boots hitting gravel instead of polished tile. There were no handlers. No prep teams. No soft lighting. Just a thin trail of mist in the air and the crunch of dirt beneath her shoes.She pulled the hood of her jacket tighter around her face, even though there were no cameras. No interviews. No watchful eyes were trying to turn her into something they could package.Just her.And the weight of what she’d left behind.The coordinates Ava had sent weren’t for a facility. Not even a safe house.They were for a decommissioned relay station tucked into the base of a wooded ridge outside Lyonstone, steel, and broken satellite dishes rusting in silence. A long-forgotten patch of government waste repurposed into something more valuable than any official compound:A place to exist without permission.

• His To Take   Chapter Twenty Nine: Obedience was easier

  She didn’t sleep.Not really.Not since Ava left the drive on the dressing room table.Sera had lain still at night, eyes closed, perfectly silent, the way she’d been trained to when she didn’t know what to do. Let the world think she was fine. Still. In control.But her mind was on fire.Not panic.Not fear.Something worse.Possibility.Because the data Ava left behind wasn’t just trauma porn or broken files of “less successful” models.It was a memory.Disorganized. Raw. Unfolding in real time through footage, logs, and unfiltered therapy sessions no one was ever supposed to watch.Girls like her, crying because they didn’t know why they couldn’t feel anything.Girls who could smile on cue but flinched when someone touched their hand.Girls who called their names out loud and waited for it to sound real.And suddenly, Sera saw herself in all of them.Not as a successor.But as a twin split by timing.She remembered being told, “You are the safe version.”She remembered, “You are th

• His To Take   Chapter Twenty Eight: The Polished Lie

  The Foundation Echo Gala was held at the Sofien Hall in Viennaa restored 19th-century concert space turned modern exhibition venue, all steel beams, glass domes, and white marble floors that echoed like a church.The branding was seamless. Every corner tastefully lit. Every screen looping clean, minimalist footage of hands touching, smiling faces, children laughing in classroomsall part of the campaign.“Empathy Engineered.”That was their headline.Their lie.Ava stood just beyond the perimeter of the crowd, dressed like a sponsor’s assistanthair pulled back, makeup light, expression unreadable. Her badge had been replicated by 03 the night before, encoded with a forged access tier just high enough to get her into the staging area but not so high it would trigger a check.She moved calmly, arms at her sides, eyes never lingering.No tech. No comms. No team.Just herself.Because this wasn’t an extraction.This was contact.Sera was scheduled to speak in the final segment “Emergent In