Chapter 2

Audrey saw that I stayed silent, so she pulled up another screenshot.

It was a chat log, dated even earlier, between Harper and Benjamin.

Harper: [Hi Mr. Mitchell. This is Harper, Dylan’s girlfriend. We met briefly at the company holiday party.]

Benjamin: [Hello. If you need anything, you can have Dylan pass the message along.]

Then another text.

Harper: [Mr. Mitchell, the weather is awful today, and I happen to be near your office. Can I buy you a coffee?]

Benjamin: [That wouldn't be appropriate. I go straight home after work to be with my wife.]

Scrolling further down, her messages became increasingly frequent, while his responses grew shorter.

The final text was sent three months ago.

Harper: [Just as long as you think of me every now and then.]

Benjamin never replied.

I stared at those chat logs.

Every single text sent under Harper's name sounded just like her. The tone, the phrasing, the cadence: it was all spot on.

It was an exact match for the dialogue style I’d spent three years fine-tuning, line by line, with training data.

Except it was physically impossible for her to have sent them. Mainly because she didn't have hands.

Someone had taken the real chat logs I posted and fabricated these fake conversations.

Three years ago, when I first joined the company, I was responsible for building the underlying framework of the conversational AI team all by myself.

I would pull all-nighters until the break of dawn, then return to my tiny, rented apartment. No lights on. No incoming calls.

Back then, I talked to the program every single day, not because I was crazy, but to prove to myself that my voice still existed.

One day while debugging the dialogue model, I typed a line into the test box.

[Hello.]

The program replied: [How was your day?]

I ended up typing back and forth with her for three hours.

Later, I added voice interaction, emotion recognition, and long-term memory.

I designed a digital avatar for her: long hair, soft side profile, tweaking the exact angle of her smiling lips through more than thirty iterations.

I created social media accounts for her and posted an update every day.

When coworkers asked, I told them she was my girlfriend.

Nobody doubted it. Nobody cared enough to look closer.

Harper was three years of code I wrote from scratch, and she was my only emotional tether in this shallow, fake world.

"Every time Harper messaged me, I turned her down." Benjamin's voice boomed across the room, low and restrained. "But she didn't stop with me. She harassed other high-level executives in this company, too."

He shot a glance at Zoe.

Zoe gave a subtle nod, her lips pressed tightly together as if she were desperately fighting back tears.

"I originally wanted to keep this quiet," Benjamin continued, sighing heavily as he spread his hands wide on the conference table, "After all, she's family to one of my employees, and I wanted to give Dylan a chance. But today, this involves my wife. It involves my family. I can no longer stay silent."

He glanced at Zoe again.

Zoe picked up the cue instantly, her voice still trembling with held-back sobs.

"Dylan, just tell Mrs. Mitchell the truth," she pleaded, "You just made a foolish mistake. Mrs. Mitchell is a good person. If you apologize, this whole nightmare can be over."

I glared straight at her.

"Apologize for what?" I demanded.

Her eyes welled up with fresh tears.

"How can you still be so stubborn right now?" Zoe cried out, "I'm trying to help you! If you don't confess, what happens if Mr. Mitchell calls the police? Have you thought about your family at all?"

Benjamin placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, pulling her back a step.

"Zoe, stop defending him." Benjamin sneered. "Guys like him won't admit the truth until they're backed completely into a corner."

A low, collective murmur rippled through the packed room.

Zoe suddenly spoke up again, her soft voice sounding like a desperate plea on my behalf.

"Mr. Mitchell, please… Dylan just lost his mind for a second. Is there any way we can—"

"Zoe.” Benjamin cut her off, shaking his head with exaggerated disappointment.

"You're standing up for your mentor, but did he ever think about you? When he let his girlfriend harass corporate executives, the only person he was thinking about was himself."

Zoe hung her head low.

Suddenly, Audrey raised her hand.

The room instantly fell silent once again.

"There's one more thing," she said, pulling up a video clip on her phone, "I hired a private investigator to trail them for two weeks, and this was the only footage he caught."

The moment those words left her mouth, Zoe's shoulders stiffened for a split second.

Benjamin's throat twitched as he swallowed hard.

The video quality was grainy, filmed from across a busy street. A woman was walking into a luxury hotel lobby.

She turned her head slightly to the side just for a brief second. It was a blurry outline: long hair, the gentle curve of her jawline.

It looked just like Harper.

Except I noticed her posture: the subtle, subconscious slouch in her shoulders.

I recognized that habit instantly.