Whisper of Thoughts
There was a flicker of the Julian I knew, the man who had regained his humanity in the garden, but behind that, there was something else—something cold, vast, and calculating.
"I can hear them," Julian said, his voice overlapping with a faint, static-filled echo. "The archives. The architect didn't just store data.
It stored snapshots of every mind it ever interfaced with. They aren't dead, Clara. They are trapped in the buffer. The purge is going to erase them permanently."
The roar of fire suddenly erupted behind the bookshelves. The internal ignition systems had triggered. Thick, black smoke began to curl toward the ceiling, obscuring the dim emergency lights.