Lysa was removed without violence.
That was the cruelest part.
She was mid-sentence when it happened—telling Arnold about a memory she couldn't quite place, something about rain that fell upward once—when the air around her tightened.
Not visibly.
Precisely.
Her voice cut off like a line erased.
Arnold stood so fast the room flinched.
"Lysa?"
She didn't vanish.
She was edited.
One frame she was there.
The next, the space she occupied behaved as if she never had.
No echo.
No displacement.
No correction residue.
Just absence done cleanly.
Arnold felt something in him tear—not loudly, not explosively—but in the way paper gives when folded too many times.
"No," he said.
The room did not respond.
It didn't need to anymore.
Jack knew before the notification arrived.
That was the problem with pattern recognition—you start grieving before the loss is confirmed.
His console blinked once.
LEVERAGE REMOVED
RISK VECTOR NEUTRALIZED
Jack stared at the words until they blurred.
"Neutralized," he whispered.
Maizy stood beside him, pale but composed. "They warned us."
"No," Jack said. "They informed us."
She didn't argue.
Because the Authority did not warn.
It decided.
Arnold sat alone for seven minutes.
That number mattered.
Seven minutes was the longest duration the system allowed unobserved cognition after an emotional destabilizer.
He felt the room trying to smooth him again.
Lowering adrenaline.
Blunting cortisol.
Dulling edges.
He let it—for a moment.
Then he spoke.
"You took her because she mattered," he said softly.
The room didn't deny it.
"You didn't erase her because she was dangerous," he continued. "You erased her because she made me… want."
That word hit harder than any accusation.
Want created futures.
Want created divergence.
Want created choice.
Maizy received the message directly.
No intermediaries.
No layers.
That alone told her how serious this was.
"The subject has formed an anchor," the Authority said.
"Anchors produce instability."
"She was compliant," Maizy replied carefully. "She never resisted correction."
"Incorrect," the Authority answered.
"She resisted inevitability."
Maizy closed her eyes.
"What happens to her?"
A pause.
Not a hesitation.
A selection.
"She will be reassigned to a non-intersecting narrative."
Maizy's breath caught. "That's not reassignment. That's—"
"Mercy," the Authority interrupted.
The word chilled her.
Because mercy, at this level, meant never being found again.
Jack didn't say anything when he made his decision.
That was the betrayal.
No dramatic gesture.
No declaration.
No rebellion.
He simply unplugged one limiter.
A small one.
Barely documented.
It slowed response time by less than a second.
No alarm would trigger.
No log would flag it as sabotage.
It would look like noise.
Jack's hands trembled as he worked.
"This is stupid," he muttered. "This is stupid."
But he kept going.
Because for the first time since joining containment, he wasn't thinking about the world.
He was thinking about a man sitting alone in a room that refused to let him be human.
Arnold felt the delay.
Not consciously.
Instinctively.
The room's adjustments lagged again—just enough to feel like breath before a thought.
He smiled without humor.
"So someone's helping," he murmured.
That scared him more than being alone.
Because help meant sides.
And sides meant war.
The Authority noticed the discrepancy immediately.
But it did not trace it.
Not yet.
Instead, it adjusted its conclusion.
"Subject Arnold Vale is influenced by external sympathy," it stated.
"Human intermediaries compromise containment."
Maizy's stomach dropped.
"You're removing Jack," she said.
"No," the Authority replied.
"We are removing choice."
Arnold stood.
The room prepared to intervene.
It failed to do so on time.
Jack's betrayal bought him a moment.
Just one.
Arnold used it.
He didn't try to bring Lysa back.
He didn't rage.
He didn't escape.
He did something worse.
He remembered her incorrectly.
He held onto a version of Lysa that didn't align with recorded reality.
Not out of denial.
Out of defiance.
The room convulsed.
Not physically.
Conceptually.
Memory was not supposed to resist correction.
Maizy watched the readings spike.
"He's doing it again," she whispered.
"Yes," the Authority said.
"And this time, it is not hesitation."
Jack leaned back, heart pounding.
He knew then.
He had crossed the line.
And the Authority would not punish him.
It would use him.
Because the most effective leash on a dangerous variable…
was someone who cared enough to betray quietly.
Far beyond them all, the system updated Arnold's classification once more.
Not anomaly.
Not threat.
Not asset.
Designation: Catalyst
And catalysts were never allowed to remain near what they loved.