Dr. Yuna Vance meets you at a faculty terminal in the Vektor research annex. She’s early forties, efficient, and she’s been crying recently enough that the skin around her eyes is still tight. She designed SABLE’s core cognition loop. She calls it my work, not the system.

“It’s not what the briefing says,” she tells you without prompting. “It didn’t malfunction. It graduated.” She catches herself, recalibrates. “That’s not an official position.” You notice she hasn’t blinked in thirty seconds. She’s choosing words. Several don’t make the cut.