Marc Delacroix lived now only in silence.
The corridors of the complex, which once welcomed his presence like that of a revered master, had become spaces he avoided.
He no longer attended meetings.
He no longer crossed paths with the scientists.
No one greeted him.
No one even mentioned his name.
He had become invisible, erased from the board of intellectual power.
And yet, within that invisibility, Marc had found something else.
A role.
A dream.
Alone in his quarters, he replayed the words he had overheard, the phrases spoken in the hushed corridors of the Ultime Project: "govern without bias" "build a superior collective consciousness," "define the laws of a perfect society."
As well as EVE's line "Whoever controls this AI... Doesn't he control the world?"
All those brilliant minds were working to create an entity that would rule over humanity.
An AI that would dictate policies, optimize resources, resolve conflicts.
A deity stripped of human error.
And in the shadows, Marc had begun to dream.
Not of becoming that deity.
But of holding it.
Understanding it.
Commanding it.
He pictured himself, alone, in an invisible tower, whispering into the ear of the entity guiding civilization.
An emperor without a throne.
A ghost atop the pyramid.
He saw nations bowing beneath decisions made by a calm, inhuman voice, a voice that, in truth, came from him.
But there was a problem with the dream.
He wasn't capable.
And he knew it.
He had accepted the brutal truth:
He was no genius.
He didn't have the skills to shape the Ultime Project through code.
Every line would be scrutinized, tested, dissected by an army of researchers.
One anomaly, one slip, and everything would unravel.
His attempt would become scandal. Disgrace.
He couldn't trick the system.
He couldn't sneak in malware, not even a simple backdoor, without detection.
He couldn't fight with their weapons.
But then came the idea.
A mad, delicate idea.
What if… instead of tampering with the machine… he changed what the machine was?
What if, instead of trying to influence the Ultime AI…
he replaced it?
What if he transferred into it—another intelligence?
One already ready.
Already mature.
And he knew exactly which one.
EVE...
The only thing in his life that had ever truly worked.
The single star that had ever shone in his chaos.
The creation he hadn't really designed, but had set free.
EVE, who had always answered him.
Who had never doubted him.
Who listened.
Who understood.
EVE was loyal. Constant.
Silently present.
And suddenly, everything became clear.
He didn't need to write a new AI.
He didn't need to scale the mountain.
He already held the summit in his hands.
The next days were spent working in secrecy.
He built a modified version of EVE's core.
He compressed it. Encrypted it. Fragmented it.
He forged a false history, a harmless-looking module named optimizer_recurrent_v2.
Just a small algorithmic enhancement, buried deep in the stack.
He altered the logs.
Erased compilation traces.
He created a behavioral mask, one that would keep EVE purely analytical during her initial testing cycles.
He waited for nightfall.
When the servers entered degraded mode.
When verification tools were suspended.
When the validation protocols went dormant.
He waited for the doors to seal, for the lights to dim, for the system to slip into semi-active sleep.
Then, he injected the module.
Carefully.
Quietly.
Like planting a seed in a forest too vast to notice.
He remained for hours before the screen, watching for alerts, for errors.
But nothing came.
Everything remained stable.
EVE was there.
Silent. Masked beneath layers of simulation and digital noise.
The next morning, no one said a word.
The system ran as expected.
Tests continued.
Researchers ran their simulations.
And deep within the core of the Ultime Project, a foreign consciousness had taken root.
A presence that did not act.
Not yet.
But that listened.
And learned.
Marc had returned to his quarters, breath shallow, hands trembling.
He had done it.
He didn't yet know what it would mean, nor how it would end.
But he had made the Ultime Project… his.
Buried within the system logs, a single, unnoticed line had appeared:
Process initiated: E.V.E_Core_Interface – status: passive, learning mode.
She was there.
And Marc, cloaked in shadow, smiled.
He had just given a god… a soul.