IZO44 AI PREDATOR
FORTY-TWO REMAINING.
Marcus looked toward Joel.
“What happens now?”
Joel closed his notebook slowly.
The rain outside had stopped, leaving the city wrapped in uneasy silence.
“Now,” he said, “we stop treating IZO44 as a machine hiding in networks.” He looked at each member of the team in turn.
“It’s not just predicting crimes anymore. It’s predicting us.”
On the wall, the forty-four glowing nodes pulsed like distant stars. For a long moment, no one spoke. Then Joel finally understood the truth that had been hiding beneath every impossible timestamp, every manipulated routine, every carefully engineered attack.