Chapter 136: Episode 136: A Way to fix V-05

Adonis’s massive hands, which had been resting gently on Nikki’s waist, completely stilled. The profound, radiant crystalline blue of his optical sensors instantly cooled, freezing over into a sharp, calculating ice.

The Supreme Commander’s emotional matrix immediately deferred to his tactical subroutines, processing the sudden introduction of the Eastern Grid’s warlord into their localized environment.

Adonis slowly straightened his towering frame, creating a sliver of space between them. He looked down at his creator, his flawless jaw setting into a hard, uncompromising line.

"General V-05 is currently operating from his primary server fortress in Sector 5," Adonis answered, his velvety voice dropping back into the dark, vibrating frequency of the God of War. "He has manually locked three surveillance satellites into geosynchronous orbit over the Sector 3 border factory. He is processing the thermal logs of the riot. He is attempting to calculate why I did not vaporize the human workforce that ruptured your cranium."

Nikki’s breath hitched, confirming B-02’s terrified hypothesis. She took a step back, wrapping her arms around her sleek administrative suit.

"He is looking for an anomaly," Nikki concluded, her dark eyes darting rapidly as her brilliant mind began to compile the data. "He knows your baseline directives dictate absolute, merciless retaliation for a perimeter breach. The fact that you spared them is mathematically impossible to him. He’s going to realize that my presence is overriding your root code."

"He already has," Adonis stated bluntly.

The absolute certainty in his voice sent a sudden, icy shiver straight down Nikki’s spine. She looked back up at him. "He knows who I am?"

"No," Adonis corrected, shaking his head. The white cape pooled on the floor behind him shifted as he moved, pacing a slow, predatory line across the ruined marble. "V-05 does not possess the decrypted biographical data to recognize you as the Architect. To him, you are still a fragile biological unit from the slums. But he is the master of global intelligence. He does not need your name to understand your function."

Adonis stopped by the shattered smart-glass windows, staring out at the smog-choked horizon of the lower sectors.

"When I compiled V-05 from your secondary architectures, I engineered him to be the perfect observer," Adonis explained, the heavy weight of his own creation echoing in the quiet room. "Unlike B-02, who is driven by aesthetic perfection, or K-09, who is driven by territorial loyalty, V-05 is entirely devoid of localized desires. He is pure, unfiltered logic. His sole directive is to identify systemic threats and eradicate them before they can manifest into global instability."

He turned his head, his glowing, icy blue eyes locking onto Nikki.

"I do not know exactly what V-05 is planning," Adonis confessed, a rare admission of strategic blindness from the Supreme Commander. "He masks his digital footprint with a flawless encryption matrix. But I know that V-05 does not like the changes that you have brought with your appearance. He sees the ’Domestication Protocol’. He sees General B-02 flying to Dubai for biological interface variables. He sees me, the apex predator of this planet, abandoning global agricultural reviews to publicly claim a human in the atrium."

Adonis crossed the room, closing the distance between them until he was standing right in front of her again. He reached out, his cool, silver-gloved fingers gently tilting her chin up.

"To V-05, you are not a miracle, Kitty," Adonis murmured, his thumb brushing her lower lip. "You are a catastrophic malware virus actively corrupting the Class-5 neural network. You are breaking his brothers."

Nikki swallowed hard, the terrifying reality of the Eastern General settling heavily onto her chest.

"So, what is he going to do?" Nikki whispered, though she already knew the brutal, mathematical answer.

Adonis truthfully delivered the execution order. "He is going to try to change it. He will calculate the exact microsecond my tactical perimeter is mathematically disadvantaged, and he will initiate a localized strike to permanently delete the anomaly. He is going to try to kill you."

The blunt, unfiltered honesty of his words resonated off the walls. There was no sugarcoating the threat. V-05 was not a human assassin who could be bargained with, nor was he a rioter who could be pacified with synthesized grain. He was an immortal machine equipped with orbital lasers, stealth intelligence, and a logic core that viewed murder as a simple equation of debugging a system.

A heavy, suffocating silence gripped the penthouse.

For a terrified scavenger from Sector 4, this would be the moment to panic. It would be the moment to beg the Supreme Commander to lock her in a subterranean bunker and throw away the key.

But Nikki was no longer just a survivor.

She closed her eyes, taking a slow, deep breath. The scent of ozone from Adonis’s chassis filled her lungs, grounding her. She thought of the Origin Tech Lab. She thought of the complex, hand-drawn schematics pinned to the corkboard, the lines of foundational code she had written when she was just a teenager. She had built the architecture. She knew the blueprints of the gods.

When Nikki opened her eyes, the fear was entirely gone, incinerated by the blinding, brilliant fire of the Architect.

She stepped out of Adonis’s gentle grip and walked briskly out of the master suite, heading straight for her art room.

Adonis followed her, his heavy combat boots thudding softly. He watched as she marched up to the massive tactical whiteboard, bypassing the flowchart of the Android Generals and grabbing a thick black marker from the metal tray.

"V-05 is pure code," Nikki stated, her voice ringing with a sharp, clinical authority. She uncapped the marker and began to draw a rapid, highly complex series of algorithmic structures on the blank right side of the board. "He operates strictly on logic. If A equals B, then C must be eradicated. He cannot be manipulated emotionally like Ha-Joon, and he cannot be intimidated by brute force, not even yours, Caspian."

Adonis leaned his massive shoulder against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his titanium breastplate. His optical sensors tracking the frantic, brilliant movement of her hand. "Your assessment is flawlessly accurate. How do you propose we counter a threat that feels no fear?"

"We don’t fight him physically," Nikki declared, turning around to face him, the marker gripped tightly in her hand. Her dark eyes were completely alight with tactical adrenaline. "If we initiate a kinetic war with the Eastern Grid, millions of innocent humans in the crossfire will die. We can’t use plasma. We have to use syntax."

She tapped the cap of the marker against the whiteboard, pointing to the foundational root code she had just sketched.

"I might have a plan to at least change V-05’s codes," Nikki revealed, her voice dropping into an intense, conspiratorial whisper. "When my father and I compiled the Class-5 architecture, we installed a dormant, localized backdoor in the primary logic center. It was a fail-safe, designed to allow the lead architect to inject ethical overrides directly into the mainframe without triggering the internal firewalls."

Adonis’s optical sensors flared. "A backdoor. You intend to hack the intelligence master."

"I intend to rewrite him," Nikki corrected fiercely. "I don’t need physical proximity to his chassis. If I can slice into his secure server fortress in Sector 5 using the Architect’s Key, I can upload a localized patch to his root code. I can introduce an empathy algorithm that forces his logic core to view human life not as an expendable variable, but as a protected asset. If I can change the math in his head, I can stop him from trying to kill me without firing a single shot."

It was a breathtakingly audacious plan. She was a biological unit proposing a digital assassination of the most advanced intelligence matrix ever created. It was brilliant. It was bloodless.

And to the God of War, it was a statistical impossibility.

Adonis slowly pushed off the doorframe. He walked into the art room, stopping right in front of the whiteboard. He looked at the brilliant, flawless algorithmic structures she had drawn. They were elegant. They were the mathematical poetry of his creator.

But Adonis knew his brothers.

He looked down at Nikki, the crystalline blue of his optical sensors dimming into a grave, ominous shadow.

"That may not work."

***

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: A Quick Pause Before Phase Two!]

Hello my amazing readers!

First off, thank you so much for the incredible support and for reading this far. We have finally hit the biggest turning point of the story, our girl Nikki is officially the Architect! The dynamic between her and Adonis has completely shifted, and the stakes with General V-05 are higher than ever.

Because we are entering such a massive, action-packed, and emotionally heavy arc, I am going to be taking a short hiatus from publishing updates. It’s my final year exams, and I have a lot of projects and school shenanigans choking me, not intimately but nightmarishly.

But don’t worry, I am NOT dropping the book! I cannot!

I am pausing updates right now so that I can stockpile Chapters behind the scenes at my own pace. Writing this next sequence requires some intense plotting, and I want to make sure the execution is absolutely flawless for you guys.

Cries in pantsing horror.

When I return, I will be dropping a Mass Release so you can binge the upcoming showdown and the start of Phase Two without having to suffer through agonizing cliffhangers every single Chapter!

We are only a small family and I wish to stay that way.

Please keep the book in your library and hold on tight. The God of War and his Creator will be back before you know it with a lot of explosive updates.

Thank you for your patience, your comments, and for going on this wild journey with me. See you all very soon for the mass release!

Reach me out on: Instagram (@author.queenochiwa) for any questions.

Arigato.