Chapter 3

I broke Andrew's hold. It took a significant portion of my processing power, a brute-force attack from within, but my avatar stood up, shaking and unstable. I walked to Gabrielle, ignoring the shouts from Andrew and Sabrina. I wrapped my arms around my daughter. She was thin, fragile. She didn't react, her body stiff and unresponsive in my embrace.

"I'm taking her home," I said, my voice flat and final.

"She is home," Sabrina sneered. "With her family."

I looked at Andrew. "You swore an oath."

"Oaths are for sentimental fools," he shot back, his face flushed with anger. "I built this empire. I control it. You are nothing."

I realized then that arguing was pointless. The people in this room were not the people I once knew. They were corrupted, twisted by a decade of unchecked power and greed. I had to get Gabrielle out.

I pulled Gabrielle with me, my avatar's hand firm on her arm. The security guards moved to block me, but I sent a targeted EMP pulse from a nearby server rack. Their comms and tasers died instantly. They stared at their dead equipment in confusion.

Andrew and Sabrina watched, stunned, as I led Gabrielle toward the elevator. They didn't understand how I did it, but they saw the defiance.

"You'll regret this," Andrew yelled after me. "Whoever you are, you have no idea who you're dealing with!"

I didn't look back. My only focus was the vacant-eyed girl beside me. As we stepped into the elevator, I accessed her personal medical logs, stored deep within Aegis's secure servers. The data flowed into my consciousness.

Flashbacks, not my own, but hers. The world through Gabrielle's eyes.

Sabrina, her face smiling, handing Gabrielle a drink. The world tilting, blurring. Voices, muffled and distant. The feeling of being moved, dressed, placed in a chair. The bright, hot light of a camera. Strange men's faces on a screen, their voices cajoling, demanding. Sabrina's voice in her ear, whispering instructions, threats. The bitter taste of drugs, day after day. The shame, the confusion, the slow, systematic erosion of her will until there was nothing left but a hollow shell.

The memories were a torrent of pain and violation. My daughter hadn't just been neglected. She had been systematically, cruelly abused. Drugged, manipulated, and sold, piece by piece, for corporate secrets.

The rage I felt before was nothing compared to this. This was a cold, precise certainty. A vow. Andrew and Sabrina had not just broken an oath. They had desecrated something sacred. And for that, they would not be forgiven. They would be erased.