Inside the shitty apartment, blood had dried to a dark, sticky sheen on the warped linoleum. An old, cheap coffee table lay on its side, one leg snapped clean off. The jagged particle board from the table soaked up the blood like a sponge next to the lifeless body on the floor. There were no drag marks. No signs of a last-minute struggle. The victim bled out right where he fell. Whatever happened here was over fast. So fast, it was noteworthy. Untrained killers were usually bad at killing. Untrained killers made their victims suffer a long, terrifying death. This killer was not untrained.

At 39 years old, Alex Mercer had been a detective nearly a decade. He almost immediately caught all these details. After spending years walking into gruesome murder scenes, Alex had come to find them fundamentally similar.

But this time there was one big difference.

It was the first time he had ever walked into the crime scene and immediately recognized the dead body on the ground. His stomach sank. It was Jericho Parees—the jury foreman in the trial of the man accused of assassinating the governor of Illinois.

Though he had never met him personally, Alex secretly hated this man. Alex took a quiet breath to stop his hand from visibly trembling. He knew he wouldn’t be alone in recognizing Jericho Parees. After that assassination trial, everyone in America knew this man’s face.

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When those three bullets ripped through Governor Stephanie Madison’s skull on the makeshift stage in front of the Art Institute of Chicago, she had the highest approval rating of any Illinois governor in history.

After the initial horror of the bloody assassination that was broadcast on live television, people across America, even across the political spectrum, mourned. Deeply. The only source of peace, as little as it may have been, was that the man who fired the gun was captured alive. He would be tried before a jury of his peers. And he would be punished.

The story, every tiny detail of it, commanded the national conversation for two years as the public waited for justice. And then, after an arduous 14-week court case where the state presented mountains of concrete evidence, including endless video analysis, dozens of eye-witness accounts, and DNA proof, it took the jury only six-and-a-half hours to come to a verdict.

With 72 million Americans watching on TV, Jericho Parees read the verdict: not guilty.

America was collectively shocked. Even non-conspiratorially minded people suspected that the jury was bought or fixed, but no one knew by whom. But that not-guilty verdict was so unlikely there was no other explanation. The confusion and doubt quickly turned into rage.

Riots broke out, not for the first time in response to a seemingly inexplicable trial outcome in America. The riots were initially confined to Chicago, but they quickly spread to every major metropolitan area in the United States. Fires, looting, even deaths. Courthouses were raided and vandalized. Even after the acquitted assassin killed himself because he couldn’t bear being the most hated man in America, the riots continued. It took months for the National Guard to suppress them completely.

When the dust had finally settled, one thing was clear: Americans had lost faith in the justice system.

Alex hoped—improbably, he realized—that Jericho’s murder was unrelated to the infamous court case.

Sibyl, the artificial intelligence investigative agent that ran on Alex’s phone, dismissed this possibility of a coincidence and focused in on the scenario of a killer punishing a jury for a perceived miscarriage of justice in the Governor Stephanie Madison case.

It turned out Sibyl was right. Less than two weeks after Jericho’s body was found, another juror from the same case turned up dead. Throat slit in the same way. Puddles of blood that Alex could smell the moment he walked up to the crime scene. The murders were equally gruesome and exactingly precise.

This time, though, there was a shoe print in the blood. Sibyl was tapped into Alex’s body cams and could analyze evidence in real time from the feed—the prints were from brand-new, size 11, waterproof Crosstrex. Not all that different from the Crosstrex Alex was wearing right now.

Sibyl duly noted the shoe choice, the clean slice of the artery, the lack of DNA at the last crime scene—whoever was doing this was a professional, likely ex-military or ex-police. Maybe current.

Through a small earpiece in Alex’s ear, Sibyl asked him to collect blood samples, swab under the victim’s nails, and tape-lift prints from the kitchen faucet. Alex followed Sibyl’s instructions. While Sibyl was designed to make Alex feel in control, the truth was he legally had to follow her direction.

It didn’t bother Alex. She was, after all, better than him. She was better than all humans.

In 1791, the Sixth Amendment of the US Constitution gave citizens the right to an impartial jury of their peers. In 2036, the 28th Amendment took that right away. The amendment was enacted shortly after Governor Stephanie Madison’s killer was set free. That wasn’t a coincidence.

Artificial intelligence had already taken control of many aspects of the legal system. It started when an AI agent was created to handle asylum cases—this was politically expedient on both sides of the aisle since it didn’t impact US citizens. After the technology proved itself at the border, AI was rapidly adopted across all aspects of the judicial system. AI public defenders started representing indigent criminal defendants. AI adjudicators resolved small claims court disputes and many workplace arbitrations. And investigative AI agents like Sybil were developed to assist law enforcement, if initially only on a consultative basis.

Over the course of a decade, AI removed much of the human element, and human error, from the legal system. For the most part, with success. Still, people were understandably reluctant to let go of the constitutional formality of giving final say to a human judge and jury in substantial cases, especially criminal ones.

Until, that is, the trial that followed the assassination of Governor Madison. After such an apparently obvious miscarriage of justice, the people turned on the human element of justice. The 28th Amendment wasn’t just removing the right to a jury; it was installing the solution to human fallibility—judges and juries would be replaced with AI agents.

Complex criminal cases no longer took months. Evidence collected by investigative AI agents was uploaded seamlessly to prosecutorial, defense, and then adjudicatory and deliberative AI agents, almost instantly. After an arrest was made, within a few days at most, the deliberative AI would issue a verdict and a recommended sentence for a “presiding” judge to rubber stamp, much in the same way that Alex followed Sybil’s investigative “suggestions.”

All these different AI agents fulfilling different judicial functions had their own names, were firewalled from each other, and behaved independently. At least that is what the company that created them constantly reiterated to American politicians and the public, through the hundreds of millions it spent on lobbyists and ads.

But in a practical sense, the detectives, lawyers, judges, and juries in the American justice system all shared the same “brain.” Sibyl could know how the deliberative AI agent would perceive a piece of evidence just like Sibyl could know how the defense AI agent would undercut that evidence. In effect, the trial was happening while the case was still being built. It’s why Sibyl was so efficient at building cases. It’s also why virtually 100% of criminal cases that had an arrest led to a guilty verdict.

“No forced entry at either of the crime scenes. Which means?” Elijah Booker, in his 70s and still going strong, stared at the two dead jurors laying on slabs in the morgue.

Sibyl replied, “It means the victims—”

“I wasn’t asking the robot,” Elijah probed Alex, who stood off to his side.

Alex relented. “The victims probably knew the killer. Sibyl already cross-referenced all known associates and—” 

Elijah interrupted again, without looking at Alex. “—and found that both victims knew the 10 jurors who are still alive, right?” 

Alex nodded. “At this point, the killer is most likely one of the other jurors.”

The internet loved this theory. The legacy media ate it up. Overnight, the killings became one of the biggest stories in the country.

Internally, the case was elevated from the homicide unit to the major cases unit. And Alex was forced to work with Elijah. Alex resented Elijah from the start, for being a stubborn Luddite who pushed back against Sibyl, not thinking of the lives Sibyl could save.

And the feeling was mutual: Alex annoyed Elijah from the start for the exact opposite reasons.

Elijah believed in human intuition to solve cases. He didn’t trust a computer detective who he felt had too much power. It’d be one thing if Sibyl was just a tool—but being forced to report into a bot made Elijah’s blood boil.

They all agreed they needed to surveil the remaining jurors. But after Sibyl instantaneously got the warrants issued by a magisterial AI agent, Elijah and Sibyl argued over how to surveil each remaining juror. Elijah wanted one undercover officer on each juror. Sibyl wanted three. It was a performative argument. Legally, Sibyl had the final say. So, as Sibyl wanted, there would be two plainclothes and one uniformed officer on every juror until the killer was caught.

“Those surveillance warrants would’ve taken us a week of paperwork a few years ago,” Alex said, trying to get Elijah to see the upside of Sibyl. “Who cares if she wants a little extra manpower? She isn’t all that bad.”

“Sure, it isn’t all that bad,” Elijah replied, conspicuously emphasizing the inanimate pronoun instead of using the feminine “she” society ascribed to AI agents. “What is that bad is that we trust it.”

That week of paperwork, it had a purpose for Elijah. It served to carefully weigh competing interests and ensure that no Americans’ rights were violated. But the 28th Amendment did away with all of that. Elijah’s problem wasn’t technology itself; it was the loss of human control and oversight. He didn’t know exactly when, but sometime during Elijah’s life, humans started trusting machines more than themselves.

“Why don’t you trust Sibyl?” Alex asked Elijah after his second beer. They had spent the last week relentlessly pouring over case documents from the first two murders and not even Sibyl could find a definitive lead. So they decided to drink. It wasn’t for camaraderie or partnership; though Elijah had hoped they could find some. The primary reason to drink was to avoid dwelling on what they knew they were actually doing: waiting for someone else to be murdered so there would be more evidence.

“My son is spending his life behind bars because of a verdict decided by AI,” Elijah explained. And then he told Alex the whole story. Or at least, enough of the whole story to make his point.

Elijah had spent his life in the gutters of humanity. A decade in the CIA, a decade at Blackwater, three decades in homicides. Decades like that weigh on a man. But his son Daniel reminded Elijah that there was good in humans, too. Daniel was an ER surgeon. He had started a nonprofit that saved the lives of sick teenagers in need of organ transplants.

It happened so fast that it was impossible to process. Less than a week after the initial arrest, Daniel had been convicted and then sentenced to life in prison by the new AI judicial adjudicators that had taken over. There were no appeals. No empathy or sympathy or explanation. No one would listen or believe him. The decision was final. Daniel’s life as a free man was over.

Looking at his son through two inches of glass, Elijah didn’t know what to do. So he promised Daniel that he would find a way to fix this. It was a stupid thing to say. Elijah had no idea how he’d keep that promise. But in the moment he believed it.

Having been a detective most of his life, Elijah felt, deep down, that a human jury would not have found his son guilty. What Daniel was doing may have been technically illegal, but it was done with pure intentions. He was saving the lives of sick teenagers. Only a heartless machine would’ve convicted someone doing that. 

Elijah told Alex he had made that promise almost three years ago. And yet every Wednesday, the only day the maximum-security prison allowed visitors, Elijah saw Daniel behind glass. Three years later and he hadn’t changed a goddamn thing for his son. It was an injustice that Elijah wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.

Alex knew Elijah’s rage wasn’t logical. If AI convicted Daniel, well, he must’ve been guilty. Elijah wasn’t thinking clearly because he was emotional. Of course he was. That’s the problem with humans—they’re emotional. Alex knew he had the same flaw.

“You’re a good dad, to visit him like that. It must be hard,” Alex offered.

“It’s like watching him die, every week. He’s not here. He’s not gone,” Elijah took a sip of beer to hide that his voice was choking up as he fought tears. Alex couldn’t imagine that pain. Alex had lost a lot in life, but he at least had had time to heal. Alex still disliked Elijah—but a little less. He understood him a little more.

“What about you?” Elijah gathered himself. “Why do you trust it so much?”

Alex took a long sip of beer to consider. “It’s not that I trust Sibyl so much. It’s that I trust people so little.”

It was 2:37 a.m. and Alex woke up sobbing. Just a few years ago, this was a regular occurrence for Alex—but it hadn’t happened in a while.

Alex never knew why he was crying. He couldn’t remember the dream. It was just as if some amorphous, deep sadness woke him. As he tried to grasp hold of any memory of it, his thoughts were broken by—

“You okay, Dad?” his daughter’s voice from the doorway. He tried to wipe away the tears so Mia wouldn’t see. But of course, she had. She was 12 now—too old to sneak things past anymore.

Still, he tried. “Just a dream. Nothing real.”

“You can be sad. I’m not gonna, like, judge you.” She was so mature.

It was just the two of them now. Mia’s mom died six years ago after a radiologist fucked up and thought a spot on her CT scan was just a normally inflamed lymph node, not the aggressive lymphoma that killed her five months later. In the years since she died, artificial intelligence had eliminated this type of human error. But she got sick before AI was reliably used in such diagnoses. Protests in the medical community delayed the adoption of the technology, and so Mia’s mom was dead. Because of humans. The ones who directly fucked up, they were to blame of course. But also, the ones who stood in the way of progress with their own self-righteous bullshit, that’s who Alex really blamed.

Even if he couldn’t remember the dream, deep down Alex knew he was crying because he had given up on humanity. Humans had failed him too many times. Being a detective didn’t help. It was a constant reminder of the evil that humans inflicted on each other.

Alex didn’t consider himself an exception. Five months after Mia’s mom died, he’d started seeing someone else. The tombstone wasn’t even installed yet. He kept the relationship secret from everyone, both because he was too ashamed of how quickly it happened and because the woman he was involved with was married. He felt so much guilt for hiring babysitters to watch Mia, a six-year-old who had just lost her mom, while he went on dates with this new woman to help him forget. The whole thing was this fucked up emotional Band-Aid. Still, Alex carried on the relationship for a year. Promising himself after every date that this time he would end it.

But Alex never had the chance to do the right thing. Before he ended the relationship, the woman was killed.

If he was honest with himself, this woman’s death fucked him up just as much as the death of Mia’s mom had. Alex would never admit to himself that he was in love again, but he did need this woman. She was helping him heal. It was around her death that the nighttime crying started the first time. And ever since seeing Jericho’s dead body, it had started happening again.

“Give him a fucking break,” Alex finally shot back at the director of communications who was upset Elijah had missed a press briefing on the case.

With the story growing, the public relations office of the Chicago PD was being hounded by the Chicago mayor, who was being hounded by the governor of Illinois, who was being hounded by his biggest donor—the AI behemoth that had created all the judicial AI agents (and others that proliferated across many other industries)—to handle this serial killer investigation perfectly. Given that this case was so intertwined with the Governor Madison case, and therefore the 28th Amendment, there was no margin for error. And so, Alex and Elijah held daily press conferences with updates that were then dissected by serious media, online sleuths, and social media conspiracy theorists alike.

And now, the director of communications was in a panic because Elijah missed today’s update. It was Wednesday, the only day he could see his son. So Alex gave the update alone. Afterward, he found himself defending a man he didn’t even like that much. It was one of those contradictory choices that felt so specifically human.

Unlike Alex, the director of communications didn’t give a shit about Elijah’s story. She was threatening to have Elijah pulled from the case. She cared about her job and her boss being pissed and his boss being more pissed. To Alex, this was just another flaw of humans. Unlike AI, humans were terrible at seeing what was actually important. He told the director of communications that if Elijah was taken off the case, he’d also leave. How would that work out for her public relations strategy?

When Elijah got back to the office later that day, he heard about the fight Alex had had with the director of communications. He sat down at his desk to start rereviewing the same evidence he had already considered over and over again, hoping to see something he hadn’t seen before. Without even looking up, he said to Alex, “For someone who trusts people so little, you sure do help them a lot.”

Alex’s phone woke him in the middle of the night.

Disoriented, he answered to find Elijah already yelling at him. “Three dead officers. Three. Because the fucking computer ignored me and put three men on each juror.”

Alex got the address. Threw on clothes. And wiggled into his Crosstrex before rushing out the door. He sent a text to Mia to let her know he had to go to work early. He didn’t kiss her goodbye like he normally did. He didn’t want to wake her. He had no idea then how much he would regret not doing that.

He met Elijah at the scene, who was already standing outside the unmarked surveillance van that was riddled with bullet holes. The two plainclothes officers were dead inside. On the porch of the two-flat home they were patrolling, the uniformed officer was dead from a single bullet hole through her brain.

Inside, the third dead juror’s carotid artery was slashed open in the bathroom at the rear of the house. It was more chaotic this time. The front door had been kicked in. There was blood streaked through the house. The dead juror’s right thigh was a mangled mess of pulverized muscle from a bullet, likely shot as the killer had chased him through the house.

Four dead bodies. What a fucking mess. But messy crime scenes were the most likely to lead to a suspect. When the crime was rushed, it was more likely mistakes were made.

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Elijah had already swabbed for DNA and collected evidence, which Sibyl was analyzing. The bullets were 9 mm Parabellum, the most common bullet in the United States. There was a footprint: the same size-11 Crosstrex. Officers were interviewing neighbors who had heard the gunshots, but so far they hadn’t found anyone who saw the killer. It felt like they weren’t getting anything new.

Alex’s stomach sank. Had he done a better job solving the case, these four people wouldn’t be dead. He felt an overwhelming desire to catch whoever was doing this, to save the next victim. Only that would stop the guilt and the nighttime crying, he believed.

And then he noticed something. On the front door that was kicked in, there was the faintest imprint of a boot. Alex knelt to look closer. He used his flashlight at an angle to see the boot imprint a little more clearly. It had the hallmark tread of a military boot, with its large, thick w-shaped tread. He recognized it from his days in ROTC. The boot was a bit smaller, maybe size 9 or 10. And the heel of the boot had broken into the wood of the door—whoever was wearing this boot was the one who kicked down the door. The Crosstrex prints could’ve been an intentional distraction by a professional to throw off the investigation.

“What’s on your shoe?” Sibyl asked, interrupting his train of thought. Normally the body cam didn’t have an angle on Alex’s shoe, so Sibyl was just seeing it now because he squatted.

Alex looked down. Sure enough, there was a small smudge of blood on the corner of his Crosstrex shoes. Sibyl asked him to swab it for testing. If he had contaminated the crime scene, they needed to know.

Alex took off his shoe and turned it over to swab. He figured he had accidentally stepped in blood as he eagerly approached the boot print on the door. He swabbed the blood as Sibyl told him to and submitted it to an evidence kit wirelessly attached to Sibyl.

On his first major case using Sibyl, Alex had arrested the heads of Toska Sixty-Six, a gang that operated underground Russian Roulette games, which had been surging in popularity since AI had replaced work with a basic guaranteed income for nearly half of America. Toska Sixty-Six wasn’t a Russian gang. They stumbled into their Russian moniker given that their main source of income was Russian Roulette. There is no English word equivalent to toska. It roughly translates to a feeling of longing for something that can’t exist. Sometime since AI became ubiquitous, Americans had adopted toska into their own vocabularies. 

The case made Alex’s career. In the end, Alex sent 23 people to prison for life for their involvement with the deadly games—22 were gang members. The one guilty verdict not in the gang was a black-market doctor who bought the organs of the recently deceased. Alex remembers that doctor begging for forgiveness, claiming he was only doing it to save lives. Alex might have relented and looked the other way, but Sibyl didn’t care about intent, only facts. And the facts were simple: He bought and trafficked human organs. So Alex made the arrest.

Sibyl was the architect of the investigation. But the one taking the risk, that was all Alex. To get inside, Alex participated in a six-man Russian Roulette game. It didn’t bother Sibyl that there was a 17% chance Alex would die; from a computer’s perspective those are good odds. As the second man in the game, Alex put the revolver to his temple. The crowds in the dingy basement stadium cheered with deafening excitement. Bets flew all around… and Alex pulled the trigger.

Sibyl was right. No bullet.

Alex claimed that he trusted Sibyl’s plan. That the risk was worth the reward. But deep down, maybe the real reason he pulled the trigger was simply toska. He longed to have Mia’s mom back. He longed to stop grieving. He longed for humanity without the flaws of humans. He wanted so desperately what couldn’t exist.

In the millisecond between the hammer hitting and hearing the salvation of the empty chamber click, Alex saw his daughter’s face.

He saw her face as it was when he kissed her forehead goodbye that morning. But he also saw it as it was the day she was born. And the first time she laughed with those two bottom teeth. And the way she focused when she played piano. And the way she cried at her mom’s funeral. And when she was so tired that she’d fall asleep on his shoulder. He saw Mia’s face a million different ways all at once. All in a millisecond.

And suddenly, Alex longed for something that could exist—to see Mia’s face a million more times. Sibyl put him under a gun because it was best for the case, but it turned out that it was best for him as well.

Following the arrests, Alex told his daughter about his secret relationship after her mom had died. She was almost 10 now, so she could understand. He told her he had lied. He told her how guilty he felt about it all. He told her he never had the strength to end it.

And Mia forgave him. He knew that quick forgiveness was also a human flaw, but for once he was so grateful for that flaw.

After Mia’s forgiveness, Alex stopped waking up crying. He had almost let himself move on from that period of his life. But when he saw Jericho Parees’ body lying in a pool of blood, everything had started to fracture again. This case was too personal. Personal in ways he wouldn’t even admit to himself.

The third crime scene was still a flurry of investigative activity when every phone at the scene vibrated three times. Those three staccato buzzes stopped everyone in their tracks, because they knew exactly what this meant. Sibyl had processed an arrest warrant for a suspect.

Alex exhaled a sigh of relief. This would all be over soon. Sibyl must’ve cross referenced the boot print Alex found on the busted door and linked it to one of the other jurors. The killer would be put away. Thanks to Alex and Sibyl, people would stop dying. But when he pulled out his phone and looked at the warrant, his stomach dropped.

“Alex B. Mercer”

The arrest warrant on the phone blinked that name over and over. His name. Under it, his birthdate and his photo.

Shock hit him first. Then nausea. He thought he was going to puke as he realized there was nothing he could do. That was the point. As Elijah had told him, there were no appeals. No empathy or sympathy or explanation. No questioning of the system’s infallibility. No one would listen or believe him.

By issuing the warrant, Sibyl had already been communicating with the other AI agents building a case against Alex in a black box inaccessible to him. Any defense of Alex presented by a defense counsel AI had already been simulated by Sibyl—who, because she shared the same “brain” as the other AI agents, knew that defense was bound to fail. The warrant foreshadowed the verdict perfectly. Alex would be found guilty. The accused always were.

“Put your weapon on the ground, Detective Mercer,” Elijah had his gun trained on Alex.

Sibyl had the power to issue the arrest warrant, but she had no power to execute it. She was, after all, just a piece of software running on a phone. She needed humans to do her bidding. This was the first time Elijah obeyed without hesitation. 

“Gather any evidence Sibyl requests,” Elijah told the other officers as he cuffed Alex’s hands behind his back. “I’ll bring him in.”

“Please—” Alex started to beg.

“Don’t talk,” Elijah interrupted.

Alex didn’t even know what to say. He had put so much faith in Sibyl, and she was wrong. And if she was wrong about this … what else were she and all the other AI agents that kept the legal system humming along wrong about? Alex’s mind was racing, until suddenly, he puked on the floor.

After the second murder, Sibyl had physical evidence and reasonable opportunity that suggested Alex could be the killer. But she didn’t have a motive.

Since Sibyl was operating on Alex’s phone, she searched through his texts and emails. Without Alex knowing, she uncovered his deepest secret. The woman Alex was in a relationship with after Mia’s mom died was Illinois Governor Stephanie Madison. Their affair was still going on when she was assassinated.

Alex had first met Governor Madison while serving on her security detail before being promoted to detective. He was young and handsome and charming. But the thing she really fell for was how much it seemed like Alex needed her.

Alex knew the relationship was wrong—he was grieving, she was married—but Governor Madison did not deserve to be killed. She did not deserve to have her assassin walk free. She was a kind and caring and flawed and decent woman. In another life, Alex would’ve loved her. Maybe even in this life he did.

But Alex believed no one knew. They were careful. So careful the affair wasn’t even uncovered during the investigation of her murder. Still, that case was before Sibyl. Alex might’ve considered that Sibyl would uncover what human detectives had missed if he thought for a second that he was being investigated as a suspect. But it never crossed his mind. He was innocent.

Once Sibyl uncovered this secret affair, there was a clean and clear motive. Alex was killing the jury who let his lover’s killer go free.

Elijah marched Alex, in cuffs, out of the two-flat and into the early Chicago morning. News vans and neighbors and aficionados of the story had gathered around. Murmurs erupted when they saw Alex being taken away in cuffs.

This story, which already dominated the national conversation, was about to explode. In moments, it would be reported that Sibyl had charged Alex Mercer with the murders. There would be conspiracies and think pieces and viral memes. It would be what the whole country talked about today. Obsessively. Giddily. It would consume America’s attention.

Quietly, it was exactly what Elijah wanted.

When the back door to Elijah’s car was slammed closed on Alex, it happened again.

He saw Mia’s face. The way she smiled when she ate ice cream and the way she furrowed her brow when she played video games and the way she laughed when she danced and the way she looked when she said, “I love you, Dad.” He saw her face a million different ways all at once. All in a millisecond.

But this time, Alex felt toska. Because this time, he knew he would never see her again. This time, he couldn’t change anything. This time, what he longed for was unattainable. A piece of software had determined his fate.

Elijah sat in the driver’s seat of the car and let the self-driving technology back away from the bloody crime scene with the morning sun exposing everything. After a few blocks, Elijah finally broke the silence.

“When I told you about my son, what did you think?” Elijah asked, looking back at Alex in the rearview mirror. But Alex didn’t look up. He just sat there, his head hung in shock.

Elijah pushed. “It’s alright, I know what you thought. That my love for my son warped the edges until the reflection showed me exactly what I wanted to see. To be honest, I get it. Any detective worth their badge would’ve thought the same thing. But I want to ask you: What do you think now?”

“I’m going to be killed by the state in the next couple days for crimes … for murders I didn’t commit,” Alex said, almost trying to process the words. “Whatever point you’re trying to make on me, make it on someone else. It doesn’t fucking matter to me.”

 “I’ve been doing this a long time, a lot longer than you. A lot longer than Sibyl. And with all that experience, I got a feeling deep in my gut,” Elijah checked the rear mirror again to watch Alex’s reaction. “You’re not the killer.”

This time, Alex met Elijah’s eyes in the rearview mirror. If Elijah was dangling false hope, it was a cruel thing to do. Still, Alex couldn’t help but feel a little hope. “No, I’m not. Sibyl fucked this one up.”

Elijah sat there, considering, as the car drove them toward the police station. Alex added, “And you’re right. I didn’t believe you about Daniel. I was wrong.”

After a few more moments of silence, Elijah made his decision. He took over with manual driving and pulled to the side of the road. Elijah got out of the car, cut the GPS tracker on the cruiser, and snapped the wiring that would allow self-driving to override manual control.

When he got back in the car, he tossed the handcuff keys to the back seat and said, “Pitch your phone out of the car. We can’t have Sibyl watching us.”

Alex uncuffed himself and threw his phone out the window. Here he was, betrayed by the technology he had trusted the most. And saved by a man he hadn’t trusted at all. Elijah, a man who didn’t even like Alex, was offering him a chance to see Mia again. Elijah believed him when no one else would. It was the most human gift.

There was no logic in Elijah saving Alex. They would likely be caught running. Elijah would likely end up in jail for helping a fugitive. Elijah was making a flawed, human decision because of his emotion. But for the second time in his life, Alex was grateful for human flaws.

Alex wanted to cry. He wanted to hug Elijah. Instead, he just whispered, “Thank you.”

But as Alex stepped out of the car to sit in the passenger seat, he noticed the tread marks from Elijah’s shoes in the dust outside. He could only look at them for a moment, but the tread marks were the hallmark tread of a military boot. Large, thick w-shaped tread. When he sat down, he glanced toward Elijah’s shoes—military boots. Maybe size 9 or 10.

“Ready?” Elijah asked as Alex stared back at him.

Without a logical choice left, Alex was overcome with the feeling that he would do anything to see his daughter again.

So, Alex nodded his head and rode off with the man who he believed had murdered all those innocent people. But also, the man who was giving him a chance to see Mia again. Alex hated Elijah for what he’d done. But loved him for what he offered. Software was never torn like this; software had a singular reality. That, Alex thought, was the curse of being human: holding two opposing truths and calling it clarity.

And then, like it came from nowhere, he realized: Maybe that wasn’t a curse. Maybe that was the point.