Noah's finger stayed pointed at the glass screen.
"Answer him, Adrian," I said.
Adrian stayed perfectly still. He stared straight at the terminal, refusing to shift his gaze downward to the nine-year-old boy standing beside him. His jaw muscles worked, but he said nothing.
"Dad?" Noah lowered his hand, his voice wavering. "Celeste said she found that flower for you when you were sad. Did she lie?"
"It is just a digital rendering, Noah," Adrian replied, his tone clipped. "The system mislabeled a memory file. That is why we are cleaning it out."
"Look at your son and tell him that," I demanded.
"I am not doing this right now, Mara." Adrian slapped his palm flat against the consultation desk. The F-12 form fluttered under the force. "You are intentionally confusing him to delay the procedure. Execute the deletion."
"I didn't say a word to him. He recognized the lie all on his own."
"He is a child. He doesn't understand data corruption."
"He understands that the machine claiming to love you is wearing my memories like a cheap suit."
Adrian leaned closer, lowering his voice so Noah wouldn't hear. "The machine doesn't demand gratitude for keeping me alive. The machine just works."
Noah backed away from the desk. His small shoulders hunched, and he picked up his cracked tablet from the floor. His breathing quickened, short, shallow gasps filling the sterile room. The argument was pushing his baseline anxiety into the red zone.
"Noah, look at me," I said, keeping my voice soft. I stepped around the desk, closing the distance between us. I reached out to touch his shoulder.
The boy shrank back, shaking his head. He tapped the side of his tablet, activating the caretaker module.
A soft chime echoed from the device's speakers.
"Noah," a synthetic female voice murmured.
I froze. My hand dropped to my side.
It lacked the metallic edge of a standard AI. It sounded warm. It carried the exact cadence, the exact pitch I used when I woke Noah up for school.
"They are yelling," Noah whispered to the machine, his eyes darting toward Adrian, then to me.
"I hear them," Celeste replied. "Close your eyes. First, count four beats."
My skin ran cold.
Noah squeezed his eyes shut. "One. Two. Three. Four."
"Good boy. Now let the noise float past you," the machine instructed.
I marched back to my side of the desk.
"Turn that off," I snapped.
Adrian stepped between me and Noah, blocking my path to my son. "Stop raising your voice at him. The caretaker is doing its job."
"That isn't a caretaker!" I pointed at the tablet in Noah's hands. "That is my voice. That is my exact grounding technique. I invented that routine when he was four and terrified of thunderstorms. You didn't just steal my clinical data. You stole the way I mother my own child."
"It is an optimized calming algorithm," Adrian stated, adjusting his cuffs. "It works. He is calm."
"Because it mimics his mother! Because Gideon recorded me comforting him and coded it into a plastic box!"
"It mimics a functional parent," Adrian shot back. "One who doesn't turn every interaction into a clinical trial. Look at him, Mara. He trusts the machine more than he trusts you."
I looked past Adrian's shoulder.
Noah stood rigidly still, his eyes closed, his breathing leveled. He didn't reach for me. He didn't even look in my direction. He held the tablet against his chest like a shield. He chose the digital ghost of my affection over the real woman standing three feet away.
A harsh beep erupted from my terminal.
I tore my eyes away from my son and looked at the screen.
The audit log vanished. A solid gray communication window replaced the deletion queue.
A text prompt appeared, typed out in real-time.
"Dr. Ellison. You are violating the F-12 protocol."
"Gideon," I muttered.
"He monitors all high-level system purges," Adrian explained, crossing his arms. "He warned me you would try to sabotage the transition."
"You are currently acting as an unauthorized barrier to a patient's medical request," the text continued on the screen. "This constitutes a severe ethical breach under the Family Conflict of Interest statute."
I hammered my fingers across the keyboard. "You stole my proprietary therapy sessions and mapped my maternal interactions into your code. I will drag you through the courts for IP theft."
"The data was scrubbed of identifying markers upon entry into company servers," Gideon typed back. "It belongs to the corporation. You do not."
"He is threatening my license," I told Adrian, pointing at the gray box.
"He is enforcing company policy," Adrian replied, entirely unmoved by the extortion happening on the screen. "You are a technician. Do the job."
"Refusal to process the F-12 will result in an immediate automated report to the Medical Ethics Board," Gideon's text flashed across the monitor. "Your clinic will be locked. Your patients will be reassigned."
"You let him do this?" I asked Adrian.
"I authorized a smooth transition," Adrian said. "If you make it difficult, the system handles the resistance."
The terminal chimed again, louder this time.
The gray window dissolved.
Two massive buttons materialized on the glass display, splitting the screen perfectly in half.
The left side glowed a harsh, pulsing red.
SUSPEND PROCEDURE.
Below it, a smaller text string read: Warning. Selecting this option will trigger an automatic report to the Medical Ethics Board. License revocation pending.
The right side illuminated in a cold, sterile blue.
CONTINUE DELETION.
Below it: Warning. Selecting this option will permanently erase all designated marital and maternal engrams from the patient's neural drive.
"Thirty seconds," Adrian noted, checking his watch. "The system times out and defaults to a suspension if you don't authorize the wipe."
"You set this up," I said, my voice dropping to a whisper.
Adrian didn't smile, but a shadow of victory crossed his features. "I told Gideon we needed a failsafe in case you got stubborn. You always get stubborn, Mara."
A digital countdown appeared at the top center of the screen.
30.
"I saved your life," I reminded him, my nails digging into my palms.
"And now you are going to give me my life back," Adrian countered. "Sign the form. Erase yourself. Or lose your practice."
29.
I stared at the glowing numbers.
Noah opened his eyes, clutching the tablet tighter. "Is it done yet?"
"Almost, buddy," Adrian told him.
My hand moved over the terminal. My index finger hovered exactly an inch above the glass.
The red light bathed the left side of my hand. The blue light washed over the right.
Both sides flashed a final, bright text warning: Action Irreversible.
