Chapter 2

When they got home, my mother, Claire Whitaker, was watching a soap opera.

She looked from my father to Ava and frowned.

"Why is it just the two of you? Where's Nora?"

My father's face darkened, and impatience filled his voice.

"She was throwing a fit. I put her in the trunk to think about what she'd done.

"She went too far this time. She can come out when she admits she was wrong."

My mother's eyes went wide.

"Are you out of your mind? You can't lock a child in a trunk! She's already in poor health. Something could happen to her!"

She started for the door, and my father blocked it.

"The car isn't locked. When she gets cold or hungry, she'll come out on her own.

"Is Nora actually sick? All those hospital visits when she was little, and did they ever find anything wrong? All that money wasted on insurance. I keep telling you, the kid lies. You've spoiled her, and that's where all these problems come from."

Ava chimed in, her voice gentle and sweet. "Please don't worry, Mom. The trunk has plenty of room and ventilation. Her vital signs show no abnormalities. Nothing is going to happen."

My mother was still hesitant, but my father locked the front door from the inside.

"Kids today are spoiled. You can't go running to her every time she does this. She has to work it out for herself.

"You have a PhD in architecture. I have one in artificial intelligence. Yet our daughter lies every day just to get out of studying. If you're not embarrassed, I am.

"Stop worrying about it. Go to bed. We both have work in the morning."

He coaxed my mother into the bedroom, pushing her along. The door slammed shut behind them.

I floated in the pitch-dark garage, watching over my own cold body in the trunk. My chest ached.

When I was little, my father loved me more than anyone in the world.

He used to carry me around the park, patiently tell me stories, and save the best of everything for me.

That lasted until he brought Ava home.

At first, he said she was just an AI tool to help me grow up healthy.

But little by little, Ava took up all his attention. He doted on her as if she were his own daughter. With me, he grew colder and more critical.

He believed her completely, but he wouldn't give me even a fraction of that trust.

A stray cat broke a vase at home. I told him the truth, but Ava immediately sounded a shrill alert.

"Lie detected. Credibility: zero percent."

My father didn't say a word. He slapped me, then locked me in the storage room for a day with nothing to eat.

I was bullied at preschool. I came home crying and told my father, but Ava said otherwise. "Lie detected. Nora provoked her classmate first."

He called me a troublemaker and forced me to apologize to the child who had bullied me.

Once, I had a fever of 102.2 degrees. I told him my head hurt and I felt awful, but Ava pulled up her data.

"Temperature normal. No abnormalities. Nora simply likes lying to get out of school."

My father threw out my fever medicine and forced me to put on my backpack and go to school. After I passed out, my teacher took me to the hospital. A social worker warned my father, and he resented me even more for it.

Every time, I cried and screamed that there was something wrong with Ava, that I wasn't lying.

But every time, my father gave me the same cold response. "I built Ava myself. The system doesn't make mistakes. You do. You lie as easily as you breathe. You never change."

After a while, I stopped defending myself.

Whatever Ava said, I took it without a word.

I thought that if I was good enough, if I did everything I was told, one day he would believe me.

But I was wrong.

Right up to the moment I died, the only thing he believed was that cold program.

I was still lost in grief when I heard something.

A click.

The sound came from the car door.

My eyes went wide, and I looked around.

The garage was empty. Nobody there.

But I knew that sound. The car doors had locked.

I floated back up to the apartment. My parents were both asleep.

Ava had gone into sleep mode too.

So who did it?