Chapter Thirty-Eight

Viktoriya sat in her bed, wrapped in the comforter, with her mom beside her, cuddling and brushing her hair. Then a knock came on the door, just before it slid open, and Rosa walked in.

“Got you something,” he said. She sat upright. A chromium-white android stepped up.

“Hello, Viktori-Ya,” CLEFF said.

“You are okay!” she shouted joyfully as she jumped off her bed, diving toward CLEFF.

“Easy there, he’s hard as a tank!” her dad said, but too late. She had already clanked against his chromium shell, wrapping herself against him.

“So, he is not entirely done yet, still some adjustments and programming to take care of. And we will have to refit the gunnery array and other systems necessary for defense by the week’s end.

“But for now, he is okay for a visit.”

“Look, CLEFF! I have an arm like yours now!” she giggled, making her way out of the room with her dear friend.

“Thank you, Dad!”

Eva exhaled as they left the room.

“Any news on Aura?” she asked.

He sat on the bed beside her, taking a deep breath before saying,

“So, you’d better sit down. Edmund called earlier. The strike team has taken out all the hackers during their failed attempt to hijack TITAN and take it over.”

She sat up expectantly.

“But…” he took another deep breath.

“TITAN has fallen.”

He turned to face his wife, walking her into the living room.

“Noxx, turn on the news, please,” he instructed.

The TV quickly obliged.

She gasped aloud—not having expected such a horrific sight on screen, covering her mouth with both hands.

The footage had followed TITAN as it fell through the sky, chunks of metal ripping off its body and flaming up on the descent.

The circular ship spun slowly, uncontrollably as it gradually picked up speed.

Finally—it slammed into the icy ocean—steam from the hot metal hitting the icebergs splashed up into the air.

“And that, viewers, was the sight from just hours ago as the infamous TITAN—the machine meant to save us all, that ended up becoming our demise ushering in the Frost—crashed down into the northern Atlantic Ocean,” an announcer reported. The anchor held a hand to her ear. “This just in—we’re getting live information. This could be related to a terrorist group most recently associated with the cyberattack on TITAN. Argosys’ underground bulletin boards are buzzing with high-ranking members taking credit for the ship’s destruction. Now over to my colleague Carlton, who is on the scene with iCAI representative Deputy Director Carter with the exclusive scoop on this story.”

“Rosa,” she whispered, completely horrified by what she saw.

He took her hand. “I know. I know.”

“Thanks, Diana,” the reporter on screen said as the image changed to a scene in front of the White House. “I’m here with iCAI Deputy Director Carter—”

“Thanks, Carlton,” she said curtly, interrupting the man. She turned directly toward the camera.

“I’ll keep this brief. Earlier today, we were made aware of a threat on TITAN and its intent to be reactivated under the control of a virus created by the terrorist group Argosys. After evacuating all civilians from the vessel, we sent a defense and security personnel team to protect the ship in a collaborative effort with the UiN. All the Argosys attackers were eliminated. However, the mission to defend TITAN failed, as the terrorists inserted destructive code into the system, taking it down.”

Eva gasped. It was like a stab to her chest. Aura was gone. Even though she was the reason their daughter had gone through all that trauma, and now she was dead, it broke her heart..

“Forgive me, Deputy Director,” the man said as he shoved the microphone in the woman’s face.

“But are you saying that from the very beginning, they intended to destroy TITAN, not to reprogram or reverse its effects causing the Frost, as they publicly claimed their covert mission was?”

“I’m saying Argosys had no intention of ever saving the world from the Frost. They planned to eliminate TITAN once and for all. We are now tracing traffic from other hackers that also may have intentions to strike other assets. That is our only comment, thank you.”

“Wow,” said Diana, the show flashing back to the newsroom. “You heard it here first, folks; this is an extraordinary—”

The TV clicked off.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“What’d you do that for?” Eva said, sitting upright. Rosa shook his head.

“That’s bullshit. It’s the iCAI, their spies—they won’t be telling the truth. Just whatever makes them look good and as if they were in control. I can promise you, that is a complete lie. Aura would never agree to destroy TITAN. Never in a million years.”

She nodded. He had a point. “We’ll have to get the actual story from Edmund. He’ll know.”

“Yes, he will.”

“But for now, we know one thing for absolute certain—TITAN has fallen.”

People celebrated all over the world.

Most were convinced that since they took TITAN down, everything would go back to normal, the way it was before.

But their hope was misplaced, lacking any genuine science. Instead, relying on what the media had fed them, or some simply having a hunch from their gut.

If TITAN had caused the Frost, then removing it should make it go away, or that was the standard false narrative that became a point of hope for some.

They considered TITAN falling good luck, God’s grace, goodwill, or something else. At least that was the sentiment of those who still believed that taking it down would manage to save us all.

After the Frost came, everyone was convinced they had no hope and faced a frozen demise. That TITAN had sealed their fate, ending them all forever.

And then, TITAN fell.

The phone had been ringing off the hook at the Kuzland residence for the past couple of days. In fact, ever since the fall of TITAN, there had been so many calls that Rosa had to set the AI to send them straight to voicemail.

The day after TTIAN hit the icy Atlantic Ocean, the entire Argosys organization collapsed. It was soon revealed both of their leaders—Aura Leighey and several unidentified Argosys members on their ship—had been eliminated.

They were all pronounced dead.

The event's aftermath yielded the revelation that—contrary to the belief that most of the world held since the Frost was first discovered—Rosa and Evata Kuzland were innocent of leaking the initial simulation data all those years ago.

Two things happened quickly after that revelation.

The public—well, primarily privacy advocacy sympathizers, changed their minds. Convinced Rosa and Eva had leaked the data; they had christened them as heroes for publishing their classified results. Now, they turned their backs on them, seeing they were, in fact, innocent, and they were not the source of the leak.

“We unanimously rescind the Sowden Award for Evata and Rosa Kuzland. They have no investment in the award and have not furthered our privacy causes at all.”

So, those who once considered them heroes now besmirched and rejected them. That was perfect for the pair since they held from the beginning—they leaked nothing.

But the Halikkon community, on the other hand, re-embraced them with open arms, acknowledging their innocence.

Suddenly, their ideas were considered relevant again, especially with reversing TITAN no longer an option. And in that circle, they rose from villain to heroes among their peers.

Rosa chuckled as he plugged in a wiring harness to CLEFF’s daughterboard.

He and Eva could never win.

Even with their Mars mission, the world was divided. They seemed to be destined to be both the heroes and the villains all at the same time.

Here, though, the public didn’t quite matter as much as the Halikkon community.

Because with their colleagues behind them, they could make leaps and bounds forward in their progress to developing a global shuttle program to bring humanity to HH190.

It was still very early in the negotiations, but they’d been receiving conditional commitments from the world’s leading experts since their innocence was irrefutably proven.

It would only be a matter of time before the governments clamored on board and finally got behind the ark project.

The ark was the only option left.

Rosa leaned back in his chair to observe his work. CLEFF was looking good and would be back to one hundred percent soon, barring no horrible malfunction.

Viktoriya lay on her bed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, first studying the imaginary lines she had drawn from her visions, but soon after, the visions took over. She had transitioned into the dark abyss with only the bright, tiny lights in multiple patterns. A plasma corridor appeared in front of her. She knew what it was, but why was a different matter entirely.

She moved toward it, or rather, it moved toward her. All she had to do was to imagine it coming near. She could tell the lights were the stars, but why was she there? Why was it all appearing to her? The visions had been more frequent in the past few months, some taking place even when she had not thought of them, some spontaneously invading her thoughts.

She tried to reach into the bright rays of light in front of her. But when she reached out for the first, the red glow of ghostly, translucent formulas appeared. She stared at them.

Over time, she had learned many things with Noxx and CLEFF, but the numbers meant nothing other than they were very complex, and even though she was a visual mathematician, she did not understand.

Why had the lights turned into numbers that meant nothing?

“Viktori-Ya,” a voice called, pulling her out of the vision. Her eyes shot open, and her breathing steadied.

“Yes, CLEFF?” she said dryly.

“We have physical training now. You need to keep fit.”

She rose from the bed, jumped off, and made her way out of the room with CLEFF behind her. CLEFF continued to blab about the history of different fighting techniques, but her mind continued wandering back to the numbers she had seen in her vision.

What could it have meant? Why were they there? She understood what it was. She understood that she somehow transitioned to space every time her eyes closed, but could not understand how that had been possible.

“Perhaps it has something to do with your autism,” CLEFF had once suggested, and maybe it did, but that wasn’t an explanation, in and of itself.

After her training, she went through her evening routine and back to her bed, where she simply rested and fell asleep.

The hiss of Rosa’s lab door opening drew his attention toward the entrance. He lifted the goggles that were enhancing his view of the wiring equipment. Viktoriya—magnets in hand—stood in her pajamas at the door.

“What are you doing up so late, sweet girl?”

“It’s already morning, Dad,” she said, yawning then stepping into the lab. “I’m up early.”

“Jeez,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He placed his tools on the floor and muttered, “Morning already.”

“How’s CLEFF?”

He seemed to be the only thing on her mind lately. Since the incident at Aura’s, she persisted in checking up on her dad’s progress on the repairs and relentlessly hounded him to work faster. Of course, he didn’t mind. He was just happy she was talking.

“Nearly done, sweetie,” he replied. “CLEFF can probably come back online for good today.”

She beamed—a smile that radiated pure joy.

He held out an electric micro-screwdriver. “Would you like to help?”

She nodded, and her dad set her on the task of tightening some connection terminals inside CLEFF’s knee circuits, then had her run some final AI code checks for his mainframe.

The two worked together for several hours—only stopping when Eva finally tracked them down for breakfast.

Rosa smiled across the breakfast table as they enjoyed the pancakes his wife had so graciously, manually prepared for them. His two girls—the two most important, influential people in his life—sat joking on the other side.

He smiled to himself and took a bite of his food; it was wonderfully delicious. He enjoyed every bite, savoring the moment.

It delighted him just to sit there chatting, as a regular dad and husband, having an incredibly great breakfast, one of the finest and very best that he could ever remember having.

Even the food and coffee were good.

Today was a good day.