Word had spread, and her people came out to see the spy, the possible kidnapper, paraded down the corridor. A mood swept through the crew of the Cypher. Stacia saw things on the faces of her crew, twisting them into an unrecognizable mob. Anger. Distrust. Many filled the hallways to catch a glimpse of Zenith. To prevent him from doing any more harm. To see the face of their attempted oppressor. To snuff that torch of hate out before it caught anything else on fire. None of her crew had firearms, and even her own security had only pehla sticks. Though rage danced behind their eyes, she couldn’t help but wonder how many feigned their disgust to hide their true face of a follower.

Once they reached the antechamber, no one said anything. The silence sat between them as an accusation. Stacia backed away from him, her heart a wild drum solo of a flutter. A rising song rang in her ears, a forgotten melody. Or a missed harmony. The music had a way of sneaking up on her, a melancholy reminder. She steeled herself against it to keep from crying. “Let us have the room.”

“Captain?” Kenya asked.

“It’ll be okay.” She turned to Zenith. “Won’t it?”

“Like two old friends chatting over tea,” Zenith said.

Kenya glared at Zenith, softening when she acknowledged her captain before bending toward the door. No one made captain without being able to take care of themselves.

“And your AI?” Zenith reached for a cup, pausing when security turned their batons to him at his movement. He held his arms up until they inspected the cup.

“Maya? The system is currently off line for maintenance,” Stacia said without missing a beat.

“That sounds precarious for your ship. And us.”

“Our AI system is designed to facilitate ease, but we aren’t dependent on it. We’ve learned our lesson the hard way.”

“Ah yes, the Morpheus Incident.”

Stacia waited for her security team to leave before engaging him further. “How do you know about that? It was a strictly internal matter.”

“In politics—and more importantly, in business—there are no secrets. We took great interest in the Morpheus Project. We tried to make a claim that it was proprietary tech, but its creator, Hakeem Buhari, beat us in court.”

“Because he designed it. It was literally his intellectual property. He wanted it used for the benefit of community.”

“How did that work out for Morpheus?”

“We had to … sunset it.” The entire issue of Morpheus always saddened her. Life was life, whether they understood it or not. And as a community, they took the AI’s life.

“‘Sunset.’ ‘It.’ How sanitary.”

“We had no idea what it meant to regulate a self-aware AI entity.”

“I’d daresay you killed it. Morpheus is what happens when our philosophical ideas about agency and identity get challenged by the application of practical technologies.”