Chapter 22

  Danny’s apartment is small, cluttered with mismatched furniture and half-finished projects, cables coiling along the walls like vines. But what catches my attention are the symbols of the revolution scattered across the space - placards with bold, defiant slogans, cardboard signs with anti - corporate America statements, a megaphone tossed in the corner, a drum still smudged with protest paint. There are banners, old and new, rolled and stacked against the wall. Even a box of firecrackers tucked beneath the coffee table.

  Then I see the poster.

  Black and white, slightly curled at the edges, a grainy image of a young man with fire in his eyes, a fist raised in defiance. The caption reads: Danny le Rouge – Paris 68. I frown, unfamiliar with the name. Later that night, curled up on the couch, I search his name on my phone. Daniel Cohn - Bendit. The face of the May '68 protests in Paris. The student leader who shook an entire country.

  And suddenly, I see Danny differently. Not just as the guy who pulled me into this, not just as the strategist with too many ideas and too much confidence. But as something else. As someone who believes he can change the world.

  I stare at the last crumpled bills in my hand—one hundred dollars, all I have left. It’s not enough to survive, but maybe it’s enough to start something.I take the money and find a cheap print shop downtown, the kind that doesn’t ask too many questions. Twenty shirts, bright pink, loud enough to be noticed. The text on the front is simple, bold: No More Machines! We deserve dignity!

  I carry the bundle in my arms like a lifeline, feeling the fabric press into my skin as I set up on the street corner outside a protest gathering.I don’t even have to shout. They see the shirts and rush forward. Twenty shirts—gone in minutes. I pocket three hundred dollars, barely able to believe it. Per minute, I made more selling shirts than developing AI at Singularity :)

  The next day, I go back. More shirts, this time in red and black. I buy banners, poster boards, paint. I find a supplier for red berets, the symbol of the French Revolution - cheap knockoffs, but they do the job. People aren’t just buying them; they’re wearing them in the streets. They want to be seen. They want to belong to something.

  By the end of the week, I’ve made forty-five hundred dollars. For the first time in my life, I understand what it means to make something from nothing. Not an algorithm, not an idea - something real, something that people hold in their hands, wear on their backs. Something they take with them into the streets as they shout, as they march.

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  I take half of it and walk to Marisol’s room, knocking lightly before stepping inside. She looks up, tired but curious. I drop the cash onto her desk.

  “What the hell is this?” she asks, blinking at the pile.

  “Half of what I made,” I say. “You helped me. You took me in. You fed me. I owe you.”

  She shakes her head. “You don’t owe me anything, Nora.”

  “I do,” I insist. “And I also… I want you to have it.”

  Marisol studies me for a long moment before finally picking up the bills, running her fingers over them like she’s feeling their weight. Then she nods, a slow, quiet acceptance.

  “Alright,” she says. “But if you’re gonna do this, you’re all in.”

  I nod. “I’m all in.”

  And I mean it. This isn’t just survival anymore. This is commitment. This is revolution.

  We work late into the nights, planning, sketching out the details of the operation. Exfiltrating Singularity. Hacking the AI servers. It’s methodical, technical - everything I once excelled at. And yet, I feel like I’m standing on the edge of something vast and unknowable, staring down at the chasm below.

  Danny is steady. Focused. He listens when I talk, asks the right questions, gives me space when I need it. And yet, I catch the moments—the way he watches me when he thinks I don’t notice, the way his fingers linger a second too long when he hands me a tool, the way he leans in, just slightly, when I speak.

  The night before the operation, something shifts. The air between us hums with an energy neither of us acknowledges, but both of us feel.

  He moves first. His hand brushing against mine, his gaze searching. I freeze. A thousand warnings fire in my brain, telling me to pull away, to keep the distance. But I don’t.

  Then he leans in, and I hesitate, caught between fear and something I don’t want to name. My mind tells me to stop, that this is reckless, that I don’t have time for this. But my body has other ideas.

  I let him kiss me.

  And when I do, something in me unravels. The tight coil of fear, of anger, of uncertainty - I let it go. I let myself want this. I let myself want him.

  His hands are firm, his touch careful, like he knows I might change my mind. But I don’t. I press against him, drinking in the warmth, the reassurance, the feeling of being something more than just lost.

  And for the first time in weeks, I feel alive.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, Paolo’s voice echoes. His anger, his disgust when he hurled the word at me. Vaffanculo.

  Fine. Let it be that. Let it be exactly that.

  But it’s not just that. It’s the loneliness, the hollow ache that has been gnawing at me since everything fell apart.

  The fear - of what’s coming, of what I might become, of how little control I have left over my own life. And something else, something darker.

  This might be my last night in this world. By tomorrow, everything could end. And if this is the end, I don’t want to spend it alone.

  I close my eyes, pull Danny closer, and forget about everything else.