Chapter 4: The Forgotten Pawn
Zara was different. She wasn't afraid or bitter—she was calculating. She offered them tea, played an old sonata on the piano, then sat down as if ready to negotiate. "He never lied," she said. "That's why I followed him."¹²
She explained that Julian had contacted her three years ago. He offered her not revenge, but redemption. He used Elias's own disavowed theory to convince her that moral wrongs were systemic. That her plagiarism had been probabilistic necessity.¹³
Elias recoiled. "That paper was flawed." Zara replied, "Then you should've never written it." Her calm struck a chord. She wasn't a victim. She was a convert.¹⁴
Julian had given Zara the task of dismantling Elias's credibility—not through lies, but curated truths. She had fed data to journalists, resurfaced academic disputes, and seeded quiet distrust.¹⁵
Marla confronted her. "Do you even care who dies in this game?" Zara answered, "You assume there are innocents. Julian doesn't."¹⁶
Before leaving, Zara handed Elias a thumb drive. "He said if you came here, you were ready to learn what he buried." The drive contained audio from Duskwell. Not files—conversations. Ones Elias didn't remember recording.¹⁷
Voices of the subjects. Pleading, arguing, confessing to things they hadn't done yet. Elias had used deep-forecasting prompts. They cracked under imagined futures. It worked. But it also broke them.¹⁸
The final recording was Elias himself, dictating that the program must continue, even if the subjects resisted. "We need data, not consent," he said. He had forgotten this moment. The sound of his own voice shook him.¹⁹
Saira said nothing. Marla stepped outside. The silence between them was worse than any accusation.²⁰
Julian posted one word that night: "Remember." The forum lit up. Zara's theories were published under pseudonyms. Suddenly, Elias was the villain in someone else's origin story.²¹
Elias stared at the drive. "We thought we were predicting chaos. We were manufacturing it."²²
Marla returned with a list of names—survivors of Duskwell. "We need to talk to them. All of them." Elias nodded. "This time... we ask first."²³
And far away, Julian stood before a mural—Elias's silhouette, crumbling into static. "Now it begins," he whispered.²⁴