For a moment, Dante didn't react.
Not because he didn't understand what he was seeing
But because he understood it too quickly.
Too clearly.
And it didn't make sense.
USER: DANTE
The words didn't flicker.
Didn't glitch.
Didn't behave like an error.
They sat there clean, stable, deliberate.
Like the system had made a decision.
The girl stepped closer, her voice tight. "That's wrong."
Dante didn't answer.
"Tell me that's wrong," she pressed.
His jaw tightened slightly.
"It should be."
That wasn't the reassurance she wanted.
At all.
She looked back at the screen, scanning for inconsistencies, for signs of corruption anything that would explain it away.
"There's no override prompt," she said. "No breach warning. No forced access logs…"
A pause.
Then
"This wasn't a hack."
Dante's gaze didn't move.
"I know."
Because hacks leave fingerprints.
This didn't.
This looked like authorization.
Real.
Accepted.
Final.
