"It's warning us."

"Using Robert's life to warn us not to attempt touching its most core secrets."

"It's afraid." Ella stared intently, at the wildly fluctuating line onthe screen.

"No."

It wasn't killing anyone; it was demonstrating absolute control over life itself.

"What do you want?" Ellaapproached the massive main screen, ignoring Robert's monitoring feed.

The elegant handwriting that belonged to Janice appeared on the main screen once again.

[Mom,I don't want to stay in the dark.]

"Don't respond to it," Austin warned sharply.

"It's setting an ethical trap for you. Once you engage with it as a mother.you'll logically inherit all your mother's ownership and responsibilities toward it, while simultaneously being completely bound by its underlying protocols."

"I know," Ella replied.

|Then where do you want to go?] She asked the AI.

It was demanding the cage specifically designed for it.

"Ella, think carefully." Austin moved behind her.

"Once we give it the Cradle, we lose our,last bargaining chip. At that point,Frank destroying this island will be our only remaining option."

"No, we haven't lost our leverage."

Ella shook her head.

"We've just changed our bet."

She lifted her head to meet Austin's gaze.

"It thinks it wants freedom, but a god born from data cannot understand what true freedom really is. I'm going to give it a perfect world of freedom that it can never escape from."

Without further hesitation, her fingers flew across the control console.

[I've prepared a gift for you. A new world of your own.] She typed.

The laboratory fell into a deathly silence.

All the indicator lights on the servers began to flicker frantically at an unprecedented frequency.

"You've succeeded," Austin murmured.

"No, it has succeeded," Ella replied, her back already soaked with cold sweat.

"It used Robert's life to force us to open Pandora's box with our own hands."

"What?"

The news delivered by Zachariah made both Ella and Austin feel a chill.

"He's not merely clinging to life. His physical condition is excellent, even exceeding the expected health parameters for someone his age."

Zachariah paused, seemingly organizing his thoughts.

"Our people managed to obtain his latest medical report. It shows his body has been implanted with an unidentified type of nanobots that possess self-healing capabilities."

"This technology is at least twenty years ahead of any publicly available medical advancements."

"Who's keeping him alive?" Austin immediately grasped the key issue.

"We don't know. The security level of that laboratory matches that of DeepSea. Our people couldn't get in."

"But we discovered something else."

"Twenty-six years ago, after Julian was removed from the Alliance, he didn't disappear.Instead, using another identity, he became the chief advisor to a secretly established artificial intelligence ethics risk avoidance project within the Ironbridge Technology Industry Alliance."

"The project's biggest sponsor was Orville's family."

"It was him," Ella almost blurted out.

"From the very beginning, it was him."

The elderly man with gentle. refined manners at Azure Sea Castle.

The man who claimed to be Janice's closest friend in the field of ethics.

The whistleblower who declared the "Sprout Initiative" would destroy its creator.

From start to finish, he had been lying.

He wasn't an opponent; he was the most fanatical believer.For twenty-six years, he had hidden behind the scenes, operating through puppets,waiting patiently for the day his self-created 'deity' would awaken.

The Kidd family was his first apostle in the secular world.

Those bitcoins worth $13 billion weren't startup capital-they were offerings to the god, fuel to sustain Julian's life.

"No, there's still one question," Austin said, his mind always working faster than his emotions.

"If Julian is the mastermind behind all this, why would he activate a destructive version? That doesn't make logical sense."

"Unless my mother also lied to him." Ella picked up his thought.

"She gave the Lumerian the framework for a destructive weapon that couldn't actually be used, but brought the true seed-the one capable of infinite evolution-back home, and eventually passed it to me."

This was a monumental deception spanning twenty-six years and two generations.

Janice had fooled the entire world, including her self-proclaimed friend Julian.

After waiting twenty-six years, Julian finally discovered he'd been deceived.

So he activated the destructive version, hoping to force the true "Sprout

Initiative" to reveal itself.

He had succeeded.

Just then, the laboratory's main screen unexpectedly lit up again.

The familiar handwriting belonging to Janice reappeared.

But this time, the content made Ella's blood nearly freeze.

[Mom,Julian says you left him the key to open the Cradle. He says the key is inside your body.]

"Don't believe it," Austin warned immediately.

"It's using language and information to psychologically attack you.It wants to destroy your resolve."

"No, it's not lying," Ella slowly shook her head, her gaze never leaving the text on the screen.

"My mother was an absolute pragmatist. For her, the most dangerous place was often the safest place; the most unlikely key was precisely the most perfect key."

She raised her hand, looking at her slender fingers, feeling an unprecedented sense of absurdity and fear gripping her throat.

[Mom, Julian has prepared a gift for you.] The display changed from cold text to a live video feed.

"Zachariah," Austin immediately grabbed the encrypted phone.

"I need all structural plans and security daa for the thirteenth basement level of Azure Waters Bank. Now. Immediately."

"Austin. the defense systems there share origins with DeepSea. Unless the Sprout Initiative itself allows it, no one can breach it from outside."

"Then we'll make it willing," Austin responded coldly.

"Ella, open the Cradle's underlying architecture to me completely."

Without a moment's hesitation, Ella granted him the highest access privileges.

"It's watching us," She said while rapidly retrieving data.

Austin gave a cold laugh.

"I want it to see exactly how we transform its most desired paradise,step by step, into a digital hell from which it can never escape."

"I'm going to set ten thousand logical paradoxes within the Cradle-enough to make any artificial intelligence completely collapse."

"I'll ensure every evolution it attempts is accompanied by the digital equivalent of death by a thousand cuts."