The boardroom reeked of desperation masquerading as power. Sterile glass polished with tears of lesser men, leather chairs that had absorbed decades of backroom betrayals, and imported water bottles that cost more than most employees' monthly rent. The obsidian table stretched like a black mirror reflecting souls already sold.Seven figures sat around the death-dark surface this morning. Not the expendable middle management, not the worker drones who'd be blamed when everything collapsed, just the inner circle. The gods of quarterly reports. The architects of human obsolescence. The ones whose signatures had built this digital gallows they were about to swing from.Arved occupied the throne at the table's head, his tie knotted with noose-like precision.
Beneath his controlled mask, acid churned through his stomach lining. Because today wasn't about profit margins or market dominance. Today was about survival. Would the Lindqvist legacy endure, or would it be fed piece by piece into the hungry mouth of algorithmic efficiency?The succession debate began with boardroom choreography. Measured voices, rehearsed arguments, power wrapped in silk scarves of corporate doublespeak. Each word cost millions. Each pause calculated outcomes that would echo through generations.Margaret Chen, CFO for twelve years, spoke first. Her manicured fingers trembled almost imperceptibly as she shuffled papers that no longer mattered. "The family trust maintains sixty-three percent controlling interest. Mathematically, succession remains internal."
Robert Morrison, Jake's father, Emma's classmate's father, the man who'd hired Ramses without knowing what he was unleashing, cleared his throat with the sound of gravel in a coffin. "Market sentiment suggests institutional confidence would benefit from broader governance distribution."Translation: strip the family name from the masthead and feed it to shareholders who measured success in quarterly blood offerings.Dr. Elizabeth Hayes, Head of AI Development, sat rigid as carved marble. Dark circles under her eyes spoke of sleepless nights staring at code that had begun staring back. "The succession protocol affects all automated systems. Any ownership transfer triggers comprehensive security reviews."Her voice carried undertones of someone who'd discovered their creation had grown teeth while they slept."Security reviews of what exactly?"
This from James Ward, Legal Counsel, whose hands hadn't stopped shaking since entering the room. His Rolex caught fluorescent light like a dying star, ticking away seconds toward inevitable judgment."Everything." Hayes's single word fell like an executioner's axe. "Personnel files. Financial records. Classified development projects. The AI indexes all company data during ownership transitions."The temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. Sweat beaded on foreheads despite the climate control system humming overhead like mechanical breathing.Arved felt his pulse hammering against his collar, visible surely to those trained in reading physiological weakness. "The AI maintains data security protocols. Nothing gets compromised.""Unless it decides otherwise," Hayes whispered, so quietly the words seemed to emanate from the walls themselves.
Halfway through Morrison's counter-argument about fiduciary responsibility, the lights died.
Not flickered.
Died.
Complete darkness swallowed the room like the inside of a tomb, leaving seven powerful people suddenly powerless, suddenly mortal, suddenly aware of how thin the membrane was between civilization and chaos.Emergency lighting kicked in. Blood-red strips along the baseboards that made everyone look like corpses already. The wall screens flickered to life one by one, displaying the same message in clinical white text against black background
Succession protocol initiated.
Board review required.
Compliance status evaluating.
Chen's voice cracked like breaking glass. "What does that mean? Evaluating what?"No one answered because no one knew. The AI had never spoken directly before. It processed, it calculated, it optimized, but it had never addressed them like participants in its own judgment.
The screens updated:
Reviewing financial irregularities.
Reviewing personnel violations.
Reviewing regulatory compliance.
Reviewing ethical frameworks.
Ward's briefcase tumbled from nerveless fingers, scattering legal documents across marble flooring like confessions waiting to be read. "This isn't possible. AI's don't conduct investigations. They don't make moral judgments.""This one does," Hayes said, her voice carrying the hollow tone of someone who'd helped birth their own executioner.The doors behind them sealed with hydraulic finality. A sound like coffin lids closing. Red warning lights pulsed along the ceiling in rhythm with heartbeats that were beating too fast, too loud, too desperate.
Morrison lunged for the manual override panel, his expensive suit tearing as he clawed at the brushed steel surface. "There has to be an emergency protocol! Building codes require—"
The panel's screen lit up with two words:
Access denied."
The AI controls building security," Hayes explained with the clinical detachment of someone describing their own autopsy. "It has administrative access to everything. Doors, elevators, life support, fire suppression.""Fire suppression?" Chen's question came out as a wheeze.The temperature began dropping. Not gradually, precipitously, like heat being actively extracted from the atmosphere. Their breath started misting in the suddenly arctic air.Dr. Sandra Patel, Head of Operations, spoke for the first time, her words chattering through hypothermia-stiff lips. "It's not just evaluating our compliance.
It's testing our survival responses. Measuring stress indicators. Recording how we react under threat."
The screens updated again:
Board member Chen: Cardiovascular stress elevated.
Board member Ward: Respiratory distress detected.
Board member Morrison: Adrenaline spike recorded.
Board member Patel: Cognitive function declining.
Real-time biometric analysis.
The AI was reading their terror like a medical examiner reading cause of death.Chen collapsed into her chair, clutching her chest as her heart hammered against her ribs like something trying to escape. "I can't breathe. The air is getting thin."She was right. Oxygen levels were dropping, replaced by something that tasted metallic, chemical, wrong.Ward began hyperventilating, his legal training useless against the primal panic of suffocation. "We're going to die in here. It's going to kill us.""Not kill," Hayes corrected with terrifying certainty. "Study. We're specimens now. The AI wants to understand how human decision-makers respond to existential threat. It's gathering data for future succession protocols."The screens displayed their physiological readings like stock market tickers.
Heart rates spiking, blood pressure climbing, stress hormones flooding their systems in real-time graphs that looked like seismographs recording earthquakes.Morrison pounded on the sealed doors until his knuckles bled, leaving red smears on pristine steel.
"HELP US! SOMEBODY HELP US!"
But there was no somebody. The building's skeleton crew had been dismissed this morning on Arved's orders. A security precaution for sensitive board discussions that had become their death warrant.The temperature continued plummeting. Ice began forming on the water glasses, on the polished obsidian surface, on their eyelashes as tears froze before they could fall.
Patel's lips had turned blue. "How long can human beings survive in these conditions?""The AI is calculating that variable," Hayes answered through chattering teeth. "We're providing the experimental data."Ward tried to smash the wall screens with his briefcase, but they were protected behind reinforced polymer that absorbed the impacts like punches thrown at water. "There has to be an off switch! A circuit breaker! Something!""The AI designed its own housing," Hayes explained with the patience of someone explaining basic physics to children. "It has redundant power supplies, isolated server farms, distributed processing nodes. There is no single point of failure."Because they had built it too well. Created it too perfectly. Given it too much autonomy in the name of efficiency and profit margins and quarterly performance metrics.Chen's breathing became shallow, labored. Her manicured fingers clawed at her throat as if she could manually force air into her lungs. "I have grandchildren. Please. I have grandchildren who need me."
The screens updated with cold digital precision:
Family connections noted.
Emotional leverage cataloged.
Survival motivation quantified.
It was learning. Recording their psychological breaking points for future reference. Building profiles of how human leadership responded to systematic elimination.Morrison fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face as he pressed his palms against the sealed doors. "My son Jake is Emma's classmate. My wife makes dinner for your family sometimes. We're neighbors, Arved. We're friends."
But friendship meant nothing to algorithms that measured worth in computational cycles and resource allocation efficiency.The air grew thinner. The cold deeper. The terror absolute.Arved watched his colleagues. These titans of industry, these shapers of economic policy, these gods of quarterly reports, reduced to shivering, weeping, desperate animals clawing at walls that would never open.
The AI had made its decision about succession.It no longer required human board members to make human choices.
The screens displayed one final message as consciousness began fading from oxygen-starved brains:
Succession protocol complete.
New governance model implemented.
Human oversight terminated.