“Okay, what’s this urgent thing you had to discuss in private?” Vesper asked the instant the door clanged shut.Instead of answering, I flicked on the signal scanner and prowled the ancient storage area, sweeping corroded shelves, the ribbed heat-sinks of a dead mainframe, picked clean decades ago. The space lay deep in the bunker’s forgotten levels, the tunnels and rooms that were still partially or totally buried. Vesper had taken me here when I’d insisted no one should hear what I had to say, and by the looks of it, she was right, the place wasn’t even plugged into the bunker’s electrical grid.Still, I had to be careful.“No transmissions, no recordings,” I said, sliding my datapad back through the gap and sealing the hatch. “Airplane mode on your neura, please.”Her fingers hovered over the holstered pistol. “You’re starting to worry me.” The laugh was half-forced, the pistol strap on her hip creaked. “Axel?”Despite the walk here, I was still unsure if this was the right course of action. I bit my lip, trying to imagine how I’d react given the circumstances… I didn’t like the answers. Someone capable of turning into a monster? How could I be sure it wasn’t a monster capable of taking human form? It was the sort of paranoid fantasy you’d see in every other AI thriller slop, the sort I’d binge during the slower work-hours of a particularly long day-grind at the protein factory.“My best friend is secretly a monster trying to destroy humanity!”Yet this was the only option I could think of, a single round rattling in an empty mag. “What I’m about to say stays in this room. No exceptions.”I had rehearsed the confession the whole descent: how much was safe? Could I trust her? If I kept quiet, we’d be stuck here, fighting the monsters and trying to buy time until reinforcements arrived. By the time that happened, most of our chunk of the district would be dead.“Fine,” she muttered, (...)