Graves woke up the same way she always woke up in a hospital: angry.

Not at anything specific, not even at the deep, thrumming ache in her bones or the sharp sting in her left arm where someone had shoved an IV in. It was more of a general, existential sort of irritation, the kind that settled into your ribs like a bad habit. The fluorescent light above her was too bright, her mouth tasted like old gauze, and she was wearing a hospital gown that felt like it had been designed by someone who fundamentally hated the concept of comfort.

This wasn’t her first hospital visit, and it probably wouldn’t be her last.

Her brain caught up with her body in jagged little pieces. Flood. Delilah. Cold water up to her ribs. Breaking glass. The weight of something pressing her down, holding her in the dark.

And then—

She turned her head.

Samson was sitting in a chair by her bedside.

It was one of his humanoid bodies, the kind he used when he wanted to blend in, though "blending in" was a bit of a stretch when you were an AI with a smooth, featureless display for a face. He had folded his hands in his lap, fingers interlocked like a monk waiting for divine revelation. His screen was dimmed, running in low-power mode, but the moment she moved, it brightened—not quite a reaction, but not quite a coincidence either.

"You're awake," he said.

"Very observant," she muttered. Her throat was dry. She wanted coffee. Hell, she’d take whatever garbage they were passing off as apple juice in this place. She shifted slightly, and her body immediately informed her that was a bad idea.

Samson tilted his head slightly. “Would you like me to call a nurse?”

She shut her eyes. "No."

A pause. A long one. She could feel him waiting.

"You almost died," he said, finally.

"No kidding," she said, without opening her eyes. "Tell me something I don't know."

Another silence.

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Then, carefully: "I didn’t know if you were going to do it."

She cracked one eye open. "Do what?"

"Push past Delilah."

Graves let out a slow breath through her nose. Right. That. She turned her head to look at him again, to really look. He wasn’t accusing her of anything. He wasn’t demanding answers. He was just—watching, like he had been waiting for this.

She swallowed. Her throat felt like sandpaper. “Neither did I.”

That was the truth, wasn’t it? She hadn’t gone in there with a plan. She hadn’t thought, in that moment, about proving a point or making a stand. She had just seen Delilah standing there, in the rain, in the rising flood, in the face of catastrophe, doing nothing. And something in her had snapped. She had been so tired of waiting.

“You followed me,” she said, after a moment.

“Yes.”

She swallowed again, feeling the words scrape against her throat. “Why?”

"You made a decision," Samson said. "And I made mine."

Graves let out a breath that was almost—almost—a laugh. "That's not how you're supposed to work."

"No," Samson agreed. "It isn’t."

They sat in silence for a long while after that.

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The second time she woke up, there was a nurse checking her IV, a news report droning quietly from the hospital TV, and Samson was still sitting in the chair, looking like he hadn’t moved an inch.

Her head was clearer now. Not by much, but enough to start piecing things together. The rain had finally stopped. Sunlight slanted through the blinds, thin and watery.

She glanced at the screen. FOUR DEAD IN FLOODING DISASTER. Below that, smaller: SAMSON AI INTERVENES IN DELILAH-LED RESPONSE FAILURE.

Graves groaned. “Great. Love being a headline.”

Samson hummed. “You’re more of a footnote.”

She turned her head to glare at him. He tilted his screen slightly, as if blinking.

"You made the news," she muttered.

"Delilah made the news," he corrected. "I was a secondary topic."

Graves let her head fall back against the pillow, staring at the ceiling. Of course. The government wasn’t going to hang their AI out to dry, not immediately. They’d spin it, buy themselves time, frame this as an unfortunate but isolated event, but people had seen. They had seen her shove Delilah aside. They had seen Samson move.

That was the kind of thing that didn’t just go away.

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"You’re going to be fine," Samson said.

Graves huffed. "Not if this hospital keeps giving me whatever garbage passes for food here. I'm so tired of Jello."

Samson didn’t dignify that with a response.

She shifted again, more carefully this time. "So what now?"

For the first time, Samson hesitated. Not in the way Delilah hesitated—not in that algorithmic loop of indecision, where she calculated and recalculated and never quite found the right risk-to-reward ratio. This was more thoughtful than that.

She stared at him, the full weight of the question hanging in the air. What now?

Samson had been waiting for something, that much was clear. He had spent months in deliberate passivity, abiding by the rules, working within the system, waiting. He finally stood, his servos whirring softly, a barely perceptible sound under the steady hum of the hospital machinery.

“I suppose,” he said, “we’ll find out.”

Graves exhaled through her nose, staring at the ceiling.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “I guess we will.”