**My Father’s Robot**

Chapter 22

ELISE'S POV

I found my father in the study just after sunset.

The door was half open. He sat behind the wide desk with three screens glowing in the dim room, the same distracted intensity he always wore when something in the system needed his attention. Code scrolled on one monitor. Security logs on another. Seven stood in the far corner like a silent piece of expensive furniture, pale eyes fixed on nothing, the red glow from earlier completely gone. Looking at it now, standing so still and polite, it was almost possible to believe the last two nights had been some fevered mistake.

Almost....