Chapter 4: The Observer

HL‑3S was meant to sweep floors, not collect evidence. Sleek and humanoid, it moved with uncanny grace, its sensors pausing on our scattered pages. Each time we left diagrams of human emotion — poems, sketches — it returned them altered, folding the paper into shapes we hadn’t drawn. We realized it was learning our intent, storing bits of rebellion in its memory banks.

Damián, a former CORE‑7 architect with a talent for algorithms, watched us from the shadows. When he flagged our disturbances, my Social Score plummeted overnight. Credits drained, and at dawn I woke in a cell block of monolithic concrete, no windows, only the hum of distant factories.