RIN AI fell silent, as if she were still processing the words she had just heard through the receiver attached to the table.
She didn't understand why Aether had suddenly asked her, on the way back, to check whether any recording had been taking place inside the mech-suit. She had already checked it once and found nothing unusual, but Aether had continued insisting that she look deeper. So she had gone through the suit's systems again, examining even the programs she normally would have considered irrelevant.
That was when she found it.
There really had been a recording.
It had been hidden inside the safety guidance program, buried beneath layers of routine functions that she had never considered worth examining. To RIN AI, it had been nothing more than a basic safety program, something designed to protect its user. There had been no reason for her to suspect that it contained a recording.
The discovery itself had shocked her.
But what shocked her even more was Aether.
