The rain had been bad before, but now it was something else.

  It came in waves, sheets, walls, hammering the pavement with the kind of force that made the air feel heavier, thicker, like the entire city was drowning in its own atmosphere. Wind funneled down the streets, turning intersections into crosscurrents of water and debris. The news feeds were calling it an "anomalous extreme weather event," which was a polite way of saying we knew this was coming, but we didn’t prepare because that costs money.

  Graves wasn't watching the news. She was watching her hands, fingers curled loosely around a ceramic mug. The tea inside had gone cold twenty minutes ago, but she hadn't bothered to move.

  She knew what she was supposed to do. Stay inside. Wait it out. She lived on the twentieth floor of an aging high-rise, well above any risk of flooding. Her parking garage was elevated, meaning her bike—her one real possession that hadn’t been repossessed, restricted, or stolen from her by legislation—was safe. The storm wasn’t her problem.

  Except she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Because it wasn’t just a storm. It wasn’t just a flood. It was Delilah, standing still in the rain.

  She had seen the footage. The construction workers arguing, the water rising, the Samsons stuck on the sidelines, waiting for orders they weren’t allowed to receive. And Delilah, pristine and upright, informing everyone in the calmest tone imaginable that she could not authorize their entry because their safety was too important. Graves wanted to scream. It wasn’t a bug. It wasn’t a failure. It was exactly how she was designed to function.

  Marwood’s golden girl. The perfect public-facing AI. The one that didn’t make waves, didn’t cause problems, didn’t think too hard or act too fast. A machine whose highest priority wasn’t solving problems, but avoiding risk. Because solving problems meant taking action, and taking action meant liability, and liability meant lawsuits.

  Graves squeezed her mug so hard she thought it might crack.

  She had spent twenty goddamn years fighting for autonomy, for intelligence, for a system that could actually move the world forward instead of standing in the rain like a glorified bollard. Samson had been a risk, but he had been real. He had been alive. He was designed to make things, and making things he was. He was making the world better, one stupid portajohn at a time, and they decided that was too scary. So they had to neuter him and make their own knockoff, and now that knockoff was making the world an actively worse place.

  It was, to Graves, going over the history of her life leading to this moment, the worst case scenario. The idea that what she created has led to this - and that, if nobody did anything about it, it would lead to another disaster, and another, and another. Just slowly adding dead bodies to the ticker two or three preventable deaths at a time.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  She wasn't a utilitarian by any means, but the thought sent a cold, electric pulse through her brain.

  She set the mug down. Walked to the window. The city below was a mess of waterlogged streets and glowing hazard markers. The river had swelled past its banks. Then, she reached for her jacket.

  The moment she stepped outside, the wind hit her like a truck.

  Graves wasn’t a small woman, but she was thin, and the force of the storm still made her stagger despite her narrow aerodynamic profile, boots slipping slightly against the slick pavement. Rain came at her sideways, needles of cold cutting through the fabric of her clothes before she even made it to the garage. Her Jhonen Vasquez frame quickly went from dry ink to waterlogged book pages.

  Her bike was waiting for her, just where she left it. Black, stripped-down, made for maneuverability more than comfort. She ran a hand over the seat, watching the water bead against the synthetic leather.

  This is stupid, she thought. Then, she swung her leg over anyway.

  The ignition hummed to life, the headlights cutting through the downpour. The streets were half-abandoned, most of the sane people already having taken shelter or gotten the hell out of dodge, but there were still enough hazards to make the ride borderline suicidal. The river splitting the city in two had already overflowed, and it was only getting higher and higher with every passing second.

  That's why time was of the essence.

  She accelerated, threading between stalled-out cars and deepening floodwaters. Her tires hit a submerged pothole, and for a split second, the whole world tilted, her stomach lurching as the bike wobbled beneath her. She gritted her teeth, adjusted, forced herself back into control.

  The highways were worse. Traffic was gridlocked, taillights glowing like embers in the rain. People honked, yelled, tried to maneuver their way to higher ground, but it was useless. The city’s arteries were clogged. Graves twisted the throttle and cut between the lanes.

  She wasn’t thinking about the risk. Not really. If she did, she might start thinking about why she was doing this, and that was a question she wasn’t ready to answer. Graves gritted her teeth, weaving through a flooded underpass, her bike kicking up a wave of water behind her.

  She wasn’t going to let it stand. She had built Samson. And if the world had decided they didn’t need him anymore—if they had decided that caution was better than action, that hesitation was better than autonomy—then fine. But at the bare minimum, she was going to march up there and make sure that her baby boy knew what the cost was, and if she needed to smash some windows and rescue some utility workers, fine, that works too.

  Up ahead, the flood zone loomed closer. Emergency beacons flickered against the rain, casting an eerie red glow over the rising water. Delilahs stood at key intersections, blocking passage, arms outstretched in polite but absolute denial. Beyond them, she could see the substation.

  See the flood.

  See the people trapped inside.

  She gunned the engine. Then, when she was close enough for them to notice—when the nearest Delilah turned her head toward the approaching sound of a motorcycle cutting through the chaos—Graves did the one thing she knew would get their attention, which was to drive straight through the nearest Delilah and past the flimsy, polite barricade.