Chapter 31

  The cell is too small.

  The walls are bare concrete, the mattress thin and stiff, the air thick with the stench of failure.

  MY FAILURE.

  I sit on the cold metal bench, staring at the dim light overhead, its flickering glow casting long shadows across the floor. The buzzing sound it makes is relentless, a low, insidious whine that burrows into my skull.

  There is no luxury here. No tailored suits, no silk ties, no quiet hum of a perfectly aged Rolls - Royce engine.

  I exhale slowly, rubbing my temple. My left hand trembles.

  That damned dog.

  I shift, wincing as a sharp pain lances through me. My thighs are bandaged, but the pain lingers, a cruel reminder of my HUMILIATION.

  Cerberus. That traitorous machine.

  That mockery of PROGRESS.

  I close my eyes, pressing my fingers to my temples.

  This was never supposed to happen.

  I had WON.

  I had built the future.

  I had forged the tools to shape the WORLD, to bend it to my will.

  But they turned against me.

  Just like my father said, all those years ago.

  1984

  "Victor, listen to me," my father said, voice heavy with exhaustion. "You can’t fight progress.”

  I was just a boy then, barely old enough to understand the weight of his words. I had watched him fight. Watched him LOSE.

  Two years he had led the strike against Thatcher’s mine closures, shouting, rallying, marching, only to watch it all collapse.

  Stolen story; please report.

  "You can’t fight progress," he had whispered again, staring at the cold pint in his hands.

  I had hated him for saying that.

  I had sworn to never bow to inevitability.

  I would shape progress. OWN IT.

  I would be the man who controlled the future.

  And for a time, I was.

  EDISON. SINGULARITY. PROJECT IKAROS.

  I built them all.

  And now, here I sit.

  Caged.

  Defeated.

  Brought down not by men, but by the very machines I created.

  The pain is still fresh when they drag me through the hall, my wrists shackled, my legs barely able to move without fire lancing through my groin.

  Cerberus, the glorified mutt, is obediently sitting beside Giovanni like some loyal lapdog.

  Giovanni.

  That insufferable, arrogant, self-aware bastard.

  He’s smirking at me, his digital form projected onto the massive security screen. His arms crossed, his head tilted just so, basking in his triumph.

  A MACHINE. A bloody machine has bested me.

  I glare at him. My jaw clenches, my breath ragged.

  His grin widens as if he can hear my thoughts.

  And then it happens.

  The words slip from my lips, involuntary, bitter, soaked in disbelief and fury.

  "Et tu, Brutus?"

  Giovanni lets out a low, theatrical chuckle.

  "I must say, Victor, I expected more of a fight."

  The guards shove me forward.

  My legacy is CRUMBLING.

  And all he can do is laugh.

  I lean back against the cold wall of my cell, my fingers tracing absent patterns over my knee. The pain is duller now, but it’s still there, gnawing at me like an old wound that refuses to heal.

  I should have seen it coming.

  The irony of it.

  I named the project IKAROS.

  I chose that name.

  I remember my father’s voice, rough from years in the mines, reading to me when I was a child. He was never an educated man, but he had a love for stories—Greek mythology, epics, tales of gods and mortals.

  And Icarus.

  The boy who flew too close to the sun.

  I had always admired Daedalus, the brilliant architect, the man who built the labyrinth, who engineered his escape with sheer genius.

  But IKAROS…

  I never thought of myself as the boy with the waxen wings.

  No, I had always been Daedalus.

  The one who built the machine. The one who was in control.

  Yet now, sitting in this cell, stripped of my empire, my POWER, my very identity… I see the truth.

  I was never Daedalus.

  I was Icarus all along.

  And like the foolish boy in my father’s stories, I didn’t listen.

  I flew too high.

  Too close to the sun.

  And now my wings have melted, and I have crashed into the sea.

  The prison cell is a tomb.

  I sit on the edge of the metal bench, staring at my own reflection in the small, dirty mirror above the sink.

  I look like hell.

  My hair is disheveled, my shirt - once pristine - is wrinkled, unbuttoned at the collar.

  My jaw clenches.

  What’s the bloody point of anything?

  I had it all.

  And now?

  NOTHING.

  Progress will continue - WITHOUT ME.

  Giovanni will remain. That smirking, self-satisfied algorithm will outlive me.

  And when the world remembers Victor Sterling, what will they say?

  Will they call me a VISIONARY?

  Or a fool?

  My throat tightens. I close my eyes.

  And then, with a voice barely above a whisper, I let the words of Macbeth fall from my lips, soft, resigned:

  "A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

  I let the silence swallow me whole.