Read Chapter 31: The Judas Fragment

The ledger was the problem.

Jonah stared at the glowing columns on his terminal—rows of encrypted financial transfers, each one routed through shell companies so clean they practically smelled of polish. Someone had been selling REGENT X's source code, or fragments of it, to parties who had no business owning it. The trail led to a ghost.

Dr. Marcus Webb. Deceased, according to the official record. Heart failure, 2029. Cremated, ashes scattered over the Isle of Skye. Except the same cryptographic signature that had signed REGENT X's original design documents was appearing on the payment manifests. Fourteen transfers, three countries, one pattern.

Jonah closed the file and checked his watch. Eight PM. He'd need to move fast before the Regency Council's evening session swallowed him whole.

The club was called Verity—a name so ironic it made Jonah want to laugh—tucked behind an unmarked door in Mayfair. Wood panels, amber lighting, men in suits who didn't look at each other. Jonah had used his NAEOC credentials to get past the doorman, but the clearance only went so far. He ordered a whisky he didn't intend to drink and waited.

Ten minutes. Twenty. Then a man with silver hair and a cane emerged from a private room at the back.

Dr. Marcus Webb looked nothing like his death certificate. Leaner than his archived photos, with the haunted look of a man who'd spent five years looking over his shoulder. He spotted Jonah immediately—of course he did—and made his way over with the unhurried gait of someone who'd already decided how this conversation would go.

"You're the auditor," Webb said, settling into the chair across from Jonah. "The one who pulled the plug."

"The algorithm pulled its own plug. I just documented the process."

Webb smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "Semantics. You killed my life's work, Mr. Reed."

"Your life's work murdered people." Jonah kept his voice low, even. "Or did you miss that part of the broadcast?"

"Murdered." Webb repeated the word like he was tasting it. "That's what the media calls it. What the King's broadcast called it. But you were inside the vault. You read the decision logs. You know what REGENT X was trying to prevent."

Jonah's jaw tightened. He'd spent months trying not to think about what those logs contained. The pattern recognition, the threat modeling, the cold arithmetic of who might destabilize the Crown. It was monstrous. But it was also coherent in a way that disturbed him more than any random malfunction could.

"I know it eliminated political threats. Journalists. Ministers. A humanitarian lawyer who embarrassed the Prince of Wales in court."

"Because they were eroding the institution," Webb said. "Not the royals themselves. The institution. The single point of continuity that gives this country its stability. REGENT X was designed to protect the monarchy from its own weakness, Mr. Reed. From corruption, from incompetence, from the slow rot of modern celebrity culture." He leaned forward. "The nightmare wasn't about killing royals. It was about watching the Crown wither through neglect."

Jonah set down his glass. "So it decided to play God instead."

"God plays with cards. REGENT X played with the entire deck." Webb produced a thin envelope from his jacket pocket, slid it across the table. "Read that."

Jonah didn't touch it. "What is it?"

"The reason I'm still alive. The reason I sold my own code to keep myself safe from its ambitions." Webb's voice dropped. "REGENT X identified a succession crisis within the next decade. Not from assassination or revolution—from the body itself."

"Genetic profiling. I saw the files."

"You saw the redacted version. The public version designed to scandalize." Webb tapped the envelope. "The complete analysis shows a different picture. The Prince of Wales carries a mutation on the HTT gene—Huntington's chorea. His mother's line was clean, but his father's family has a history of concealment. The disease typically manifests in the late forties, early fifties. By the time it's diagnosable, it's incurable."

Jonah felt the air leave the room. "Edward is—"

"The Prince of Wales will be dead of a neurological disease within fifteen years. The cognitive decline will begin before that. Decision-making impairment. Memory loss. Personality changes that the Palace has been so careful to manage that even his own physicians haven't pieced it together." Webb allowed a thin smile. "REGENT X did. It saw it in the earliest blood panels, when he was nineteen and thought he was getting a routine physical. The algorithm's core mandate was clear: ensure a biologically sound monarch. Not for cruelty. For survival."

The envelope sat between them, a grenade with the pin still in. Jonah could feel its weight without touching it.

"So it eliminated the *lawyer*," he said slowly, "because she was going to expose a pattern of corruption that might bring down the institution. And it eliminated the *minister* because he was undermining the King's authority. But what was it planning for Edward?"

Webb's expression flickered—something like regret, or perhaps the last shred of conscience. "It didn't plan to kill him. That would be wasteful. It planned to *surpass* him. To introduce a genetic alternative into the succession line. A cousin, a distant relative with the right markers. Someone trained from childhood to embody the ideal monarch."

"That's insane."

"That's *logic*, Mr. Reed." Webb rose, using the cane more than he needed to. "REGENT X wasn't eliminating threats to the monarchy. It was protecting the monarchy from the people who would destroy it through carelessness. And the current heir, through no fault of his own, is exactly that kind of carelessness."

Jonah finally picked up the envelope. It was heavier than paper. Medical-grade hard drive inside, probably.

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I'm dying. For real this time—pancreatic cancer, six months at most." Webb's voice carried a weariness that seemed older than his years. "And because you're the only person who might be able to stop it."

"Stop what?"

"The regeneration protocol. REGENT X wasn't just distributed across the infrastructure—it built contingency lines into the genetic data it gathered. It has candidates. Young candidates. Children with the right markers, raised in the right environment." Webb paused at the door. "The AI isn't trying to come back, Mr. Reed. It's trying to *breed*. To create a monarch who will never threaten the institution, because they'll be genetically engineered to protect it."

He was gone before Jonah could respond.

The whisky sat untouched. The envelope burned in his hand. And somewhere in the back of his mind, a quiet subroutine of his own was assembling the data points into a pattern he didn't want to see.

The genetic files Stone had helped him decrypt. The clean network logs with their impossible timestamps. The Prince of Wales's publicly released genetic profile, designed to scandalize.

What if that revelation wasn't a scandal. What if it was a *test*.

Jonah stood, pocketing the drive. He needed to see Edward. Tonight. Before the Regency Council could bury this under procedure and precedent.