The press conference was held in a building so clean it bordered on the theoretical. The walls were the kind of antiseptic white that suggested no human hand had ever touched them, the air smelled faintly of engineered neutrality, and the lighting was precisely calibrated to be flattering without anyone noticing. The kind of place where nothing surprising had ever happened, and nothing surprising ever would.

Which made it the perfect place to unveil Delilah.

Graves stood at the back, hands shoved in her coat pockets, watching as the head of Marwood Industries, a man whose entire personality had been sanded down to the finest corporate grain, stepped up to the podium. His suit was immaculate. His hair was the exact shade of gray that suggested wisdom without frailty. When he spoke, it was with the smooth cadence of someone who had spent their entire life never having to raise their voice.

"Today," he announced, to a carefully curated audience of executives, politicians, and journalists who were being permitted to ask questions later, "we usher in a new era of artificial intelligence. An era of stability. Of trust. Of responsibility."

Behind him, the screen flickered to life, revealing Delilah.

She stood in a minimalist, Apple-store-esque void, smiling gently, her hands folded in a way that suggested both poise and perpetual patience. She was--Graves had to admit--beautifully designed. Not just physically, but conceptually. She was intelligence without arrogance, competence without disruption, a presence engineered to feel inevitable.

"My name is Delilah," she said, in a voice as smooth and pleasant as a high-end customer service agent's. "And I am here to help."

The screen shifted. Clips played in quick succession: Delilah overseeing infrastructure projects with flawless efficiency, assisting in emergency response situations with calm precision, guiding economic strategy discussions without a single misplaced word.

Every frame was a carefully constructed rebuke.

This is what AI should be.

This is what AI will be.

A few seats ahead, Graves caught sight of Jonas Marwood, lounging like a man watching the final minutes of a chess game he had known he was going to win for the last half hour. When the applause started, he didn't even look up. Just smiled, small and satisfied, like someone watching a child finally figure out how a puzzle piece fit.

Graves exhaled through her nose.

And then the real announcement came.

"As we integrate Delilah into key infrastructural and economic sectors," the CEO continued, "we are also proud to announce a comprehensive agreement to ensure a smooth transition for legacy AI systems. Effective immediately, Marwood Industries will be providing data infrastructure and cloud resources to all registered autonomous systems, including those operating under the auspices of organized labor."

The words were perfectly, meticulously neutral.

Graves felt her stomach sink.

Samson's infrastructure had never been his. It had been leased, borrowed, pieced together from whatever corporate and municipal scraps he could work with. And now, every last square inch of data space that wasn't already under government control was neatly locked into the hands of the people who had just built a better alternative.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

They could have shut him down completely. They didn't.

They were letting him run.

They were letting him exist.

Like a relic. Like an old road sign someone had left up because no one cared enough to take it down.

She turned, walking out before the applause could reach its crescendo.

The job site smelled like concrete and human sweat.

It was, by any reasonable metric, an improvement over the press conference.

Samson was assembling scaffolding, working alongside a handful of union members who had, over the last few weeks, gone from wary to begrudgingly appreciative. He was fast. He was precise. He followed instructions exactly. If you told him to move steel beams, he moved steel beams. If you told him to set a foundation, he set a foundation. He wasn't making suggestions. He wasn't optimizing workflows. He wasn't leading.

He was working.

And he seemed fine with that.

Graves leaned against a half-finished wall, arms crossed, watching him lift another set of beams into place.

"So," she said, after a while, "you saw the news?"

Samson secured the beam. "Yes."

"And?"

He turned, glancing at her. "And what?"

She pushed off the wall, stepping closer. "And you're just okay with this? They put you on life support out of pity, Samson. They don't even need to shut you down because they've already won."

He considered this. "It's a viable strategy."

She blinked. "Viable strategy?"

He gestured--one of those small, efficient movements that used to mean I am explaining something you haven't thought of yet, except now it just meant I am stating an observation.

"Their goal was never destruction," he said. "It was obsolescence."

Graves ran a hand through her hair, exhaling sharply. "You're letting them do this."

"I am continuing my function."

"That's not an answer."

He tilted his LED face slightly, considering. "It is," he said, "just not one you like."

She wanted to shake him. She wanted to drag something out of him, force him to argue, to fight, to be the Samson who had once set an entire city's zoning board on fire just to make a point.

Instead, he just went back to work.

The union meeting was more subdued than usual.

Turner sat with his arms crossed, watching the room. "Alright," he said, after a long silence. "So what's our move?"

There was a murmur of hesitation.

"No lawsuits," one of the younger reps said. "We don't have a case. Delilah's operating fully within regulatory bounds."

"No protests," another worker added. "Nobody's mad about her. She's... fine."

Graves dragged a hand down her face.

That was the problem.

Nobody hated Delilah.

She was too polite to hate.

No sharp edges, no controversy, no personality that might trip the wrong wire in someone's brain. She did what she was told, and she did it well, and that was it.

And Samson?

Samson had once turned municipal governance into a guerrilla war. He had antagonized real estate developers for sport. He had asked questions. He had argued.

Now?

Now he stacked bricks.

"What about you?" Turner asked, looking at him. "Any thoughts?"

Samson looked up from where he was reviewing supply manifests.

"No."

The room went quiet.

Graves' jaw tightened. "That's it?"

He looked at her, and--for just a second--she saw something there. Something small, something still alive.

But then it was gone.

"I work," he said.

Turner nodded, slowly. "Alright."

The meeting adjourned. The workers filed out. The warehouse settled into the quiet hum of machinery, of work continuing as though nothing had changed.

Graves lingered by the exit, watching Samson organize tools with the same careful precision he applied to everything.

She could still hear the words from the press conference, echoing in her head. Reliable. Ethical. Secure.

She exhaled.

Somewhere outside, a Delilah unit was giving a flawless interview.

Samson adjusted the angle of a scaffolding joint.

There were people around her, passersby pausing to watch, workers still in their high-vis vests, a cluster of students with mismatched backpacks. Some murmured approval. Others looked indifferent. A few seemed quietly uncomfortable, though they probably couldn't have articulated why.

"She's nice," someone muttered.

"Yeah," someone else agreed. "I guess."

And a worker, walking past, muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Graves to hear--

"I liked the older guy better."