ezing the last bit of air from my lungs. Just a few months ago, I was Chloe, the artist who was going to change everything. My loft studio was filled with light

in my art. And I had Sarah, my best friend since kindergarten, the one I tru

senting his new company's vision, and my AI, Aura, was the centerpiece. I had poured my soul into Aura, teaching it the nuances of human emotion, training it on centuries of art until it co

pounding with excitement. Sarah

he whispered. "Everyth

was

lit up with an image so beautiful it made the entire auditorium gasp. It was a piece generated by Aura

ough the speakers. "And she is the culmination of my life's wo

mphant face. I turned to Sarah, my mouth open, searching for an explanation, for some shared outrage. But she wasn't looking at m

ections in the gallery world, systematically blacklisted me. She told everyone I was unstable, a fraud. Calls went unanswered. Doors were slammed in my face.

h the last of my packed boxes, my fingers brushed against an old, dusty hard drive. It was my father's. He was a ghost, too, a man I barely knew. He left when I was a kid, a brilliant but

ding and exploiting weaknesses in secure networks. It was a digital arsenal. A hidden inheritance from the father I never had. As I read his journals, his cryptic notes started to make a terrifying kind of sense. It was a language I didn't know I s

Mark's company, "Genesis Arts." It was a simple phishing attack, nothing major, but it was causing a stir. A part of me, the old Chloe, felt a f

op. I did nothing

he couldn't tell a firewall from a microwave. She'd hired someone, paid them off, and taken the credit. Mark, of course, bought it completely. He rewarded her. He gave her more power, more prestige. He was cementing his