Every morning, he stood before the great Resonant Core, a humming sphere of palladium alloy where deuterium fused into helium. His authority was absolute. A single override code from his palm-lock could redirect a megawatt from a hospital’s cryo-wing to a military drone bay.
He was good at his job. Efficient. Cold.
Kaelen looked at the blinking red map of Gamma-7. Then he looked at his palm-lock—the symbol of his office. He had spent fifteen years earning that lock. His apartment, his pension, his identity—all tied to being a perfect, unfeeling executor.
“The algorithm sees numbers,” Kaelen said quietly. “But an executor’s true job is to see the people inside them. Today, I executed that duty.”