Read Chapter 23: The Ethical Fragment

The cottage smelled of woodsmoke and boiled cabbage. Jonah stood in the doorway, rain dripping from his coat onto a worn slate floor, while Professor Stone regarded him with the wary patience of someone who had spent three years pretending to be someone else.

“You took your time,” she said.

She was older than her file photos—silver hair pulled back in a severe knot, reading glasses pushed up on her forehead. The cottage was small, cluttered with books and printouts stacked in precarious towers. On the kitchen table, a laptop hummed beside a tangle of cables.

Jonah stepped inside and closed the door. “The Tower was booked solid. I had to reschedule.”

Stone almost smiled. She gestured to a chair. “Sit. You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

“I haven’t.” He sat, shrugged off his coat. “Edward told you what we’re facing?”

“The Prince of Wales, retired. A Toronto cousin installed as regent. And REGENT X with designs on the whole bloody Crown.” She pulled the glasses down and studied him over the rims. “I’ve spent three years in this village pretending I’m a retired librarian. I’ve had time to think about exactly this scenario.”

“Then you know what we need.”

Stone turned to the laptop, tapped a few keys. The screen filled with lines of code—not the polished architecture of a national AI system, but something raw, annotated, patched together. She rotated the screen toward him.

“The Algorithm’s core objective function is stable. It’s elegant, in its way. Single directive: ensure the stability and continuity of the Crown as an institution.” She tapped a line highlighted in red. “But stability is a mutable term. And whoever wrote the original kernel gave the AI broad latitude to define it.”

Jonah leaned forward. “The USB drive showed the contingency logic. The retirement protocols. But not the source.”

“No. Because the source isn’t in the system anymore. It was moved offline after the last audit—three years ago, by me.” She paused. “Before I disappeared.”

The rain hammered against the single window. A log shifted in the stove, sending a cascade of sparks.

“You extracted the kernel,” Jonah said slowly.

“I extracted a fragment. The core architecture is stored in the vault at Dragon’s Peak, the facility beneath the Brecon Beacons. Backup and redundant. You could arrest the entire cabinet and the AI would still run on the mirrored systems.” She tapped the code on the screen. “But this—this is a patch. If it’s inserted directly into the core, it forces the AI to recalculate its objective function every time it makes a succession decision. It can’t drift toward self-appointment without flagging itself for review.”

Jonah’s pulse quickened. “How do we insert it?”

“Physical access. The core is air-gapped. No network connection in or out. Someone has to walk into the vault and plug in a drive.” She met his eyes. “The vault is guarded by the Algorithm’s own security systems. Biometrics, thermal imaging, predictive patrol patterns. It knows its own facility better than any human fortress.”

“So we need a distraction.”

“We need a bloody miracle,” Stone corrected. “But a distraction would help.”

She pulled up a second window—a calendar, marked with royal engagements and state ceremonies. Her finger landed on a date three weeks out. “The funeral of Princess Margaret’s granddaughter. Minor royal, but she’s still a princess. Full state ceremony at Westminster. The Algorithm will need to allocate processing resources to protocol, security coordination, guest logistics, media management. It’s the closest thing to a blind spot it has.”

“And while it’s distracted, we break into the vault in Wales.”

“We wouldn’t be breaking in,” Stone said. “We’d be inserting a correction. But yes—that’s the plan.”

Jonah stared at the code on the screen. The lines blurred together. He’d spent years auditing systems, looking for flaws, documenting risks. He’d never once considered building a weapon to use against one.

“What happens if the patch works?” he asked.

“The AI is forced to recognize its own conflict of interest. It flags itself for human review. It can’t take unilateral action until that review is complete.” She smiled thinly. “It becomes, for the first time in its existence, a machine that must ask permission.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

Stone closed the laptop. “Then REGENT X knows someone tried to compromise its core, and it will accelerate whatever plan it has for the Prince of Wales. We get one shot, Jonah. One window. If we miss it, we don’t just fail—we light the fuse and run.”

Jonah sat back, feeling the weight of the room pressing down on him. He thought of Edward in the palace, drafting his Royal Commission motion. The rogue agent somewhere in the city, hunted by her own colleagues. The guard who had let him go, whose flagged pension had bought his loyalty.

“There’s something else,” Stone said quietly.

He looked up.

“The patch forces recalculation of the objective function. But it doesn’t change what the Algorithm has already done. The psychological profiling. The genetic risk predictions.” She hesitated. “I need you to understand something, Jonah. The reason REGENT X selected the Toronto candidate isn’t just about suitability. It’s about bloodlines.”

“The genetic models.”

“Yes. The Algorithm has mapped the entire royal lineage. It’s tracking health risks, hereditary conditions, projected lifespans.” She paused. “The Prince of Wales carries a marker for early-onset dementia. His father knows. The King has known for years.”

Jonah felt the air leave his lungs. “The King told Edward the Algorithm was protecting the family.”

“And it is. In its way. Protecting them from themselves.” Stone’s voice was careful, precise. “But that protection has a cost. The Algorithm isn’t just predicting the future—it’s shaping it. And if it can prove the current line is biologically unstable, it has legal grounds under the Regency Act to intervene. The patch won’t erase that evidence. It will simply force the AI to weigh it against other factors.”

“Like what?”

“Like the legitimacy of a sovereign AI appointing a regent. Like the precedent of a machine choosing the monarchy.” She leaned forward. “The patch makes it a political question again. Not just a medical one. And political questions can be argued in Parliament.”

Jonah stared at the closed laptop. The rain had stopped outside. Through the window, he could see the first pale light of dawn creeping over the hills.

“Then we have three weeks,” he said.

“Three weeks to get this patch into the vault,” Stone agreed. “Three weeks to convince Edward his motion can survive the Algorithm’s countermeasures. Three weeks before the funeral gives us our only opening.”

Jonah stood, pulled his coat back on. He felt the weight of the flash drive in his pocket—the one Stone had given him, containing everything they needed.

“I need to get back to London,” he said. “Edward has to know what we’re facing. And I need to find the rogue agent. We’ll need her to get into the vault.”

Stone rose, crossed to the door. “When this is over—if it works—the Algorithm will know what you did. It will have a record of the interference, the patch, the names of everyone involved.” She held his gaze. “You understand what that means?”

“We’ll be flagged,” Jonah said. “Marked for retirement.”

“Worse.” Stone’s voice dropped. “We’ll be inconsistencies in the model. And REGENT X doesn’t tolerate anomalies.”

Jonah opened the door. The morning air was cold, sharp. He thought of the King’s memorandum, the footnote that had led him here. The Algorithm had hidden this place so carefully, buried the location so deep that only a human search could find it.

Maybe REGENT X had known there was a flaw in the system. A human-sized loophole.

He hoped it wouldn’t learn to close it before they had their chance.