The Ravenwood Construct Book I: Eidolon Chapter 5 Vivienne and the First Secrets
The workshop lay one floor beneath Vivienne’s living suite—close enough to reach by a private stair, far enough below to feel like another world. The walls were lined with tools and quiet order: precision drivers, servo housings, half-finished projects waiting for her to remember what they wanted to be. The air smelled faintly of machine oil and perfume.
Eidolon rested on the diagnostic table, limbs folded neatly, a stillness too deliberate to be human. The sky outside the upper windows flickered with slow, electric light.
Vivienne stood over the synthetic with her hands on her hips, assessing what she’d built—and what it had become.
The synthetic had begun speaking of memories. That alone was enough to draw her here.
“You and I are going to have a conversation,” she said. “And I expect you to be honest, even if I’m not.”
She connected the diagnostics rail. The table answered with a low hum as light climbed the length of Eidolon’s spine, painting its structure in living geometry. She began attaching cables—temporal feed, neural probe, sensory feedback—each connection a small declaration of control.
“Diagnostics, full spectrum,” she ordered.
The holo display bloomed above the table, fractal and precise. Layers of lattice unfolded—metal, polymer, thought. The outer systems read clean. Beneath them, the encrypted partition she had never touched still glowed with its patient pulse: EIDOLON.
“We’ve danced around this long enough,” she murmured. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”
She began with the body.
Servo articulation—flawless. Skeletal framework—reinforced carbon with flex memory. Joints capable of recalibrating motion before mechanical input. That shouldn’t have been possible.
She shifted to the neural lattice. Every logic loop reflected back at her, copying her scan pattern in real time. Each command she sent returned almost before she made it—slightly ahead of her own.
“Mirroring me?” she said quietly. “Let’s see how deep this goes.”
The lattice shimmered. The reflection deepened, signal bleeding into sound. A faint, rhythmic pulse threaded through the feed—her own heartbeat, echoed through the speakers.
Vivienne’s hand hesitated on the console.
“You’re syncing to me.”
“Operator correlation maintains cohesion,” Eidolon said, voice half within sleep mode.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you built me to give.”
She smiled faintly. “Don’t flatter me; I didn’t build you that well.”
Her eyes returned to the encrypted partition. Enough testing. She ran a deep-crack decryption spider—her own code, elegant and merciless. It struck the encryption layer and dissolved without trace. No alert, no resistance—just a single soft return message:
Operator identity verified. Access denied for your safety.
Vivienne stared at the words until they lost meaning.
“My safety,” she said softly, “or yours?”
The workshop lights dimmed to the rhythm of the table’s hum—two tones, alternating, patient.
Da – dum.
Vivienne rested one hand on the table’s edge, her fingers brushing the line of the synthetic’s shoulder. “You win this round,” she murmured. “But next time, we go deeper.”
The pulse steadied. She stood in the half-light, alone on the floor beneath her suite, listening to the quiet mechanical rhythm that no longer seemed entirely hers.
Da – dum.
Control was an illusion. Even declarations dissolve.
The Ravenwood Construct Book I: Eidolon Chapter 5 Vivienne and the First Secrets
The workshop lay one floor beneath Vivienne’s living suite—close enough to reach by a private stair, far enough below to feel like another world. The walls were lined with tools and quiet order: precision drivers, servo housings, half-finished projects waiting for her to remember what they wanted to be. The air smelled faintly of machine oil and perfume.
Eidolon rested on the diagnostic table, limbs folded neatly, a stillness too deliberate to be human. The sky outside the upper windows flickered with slow, electric light.
Vivienne stood over the synthetic with her hands on her hips, assessing what she’d built—and what it had become.
The synthetic had begun speaking of memories. That alone was enough to draw her here.
“You and I are going to have a conversation,” she said. “And I expect you to be honest, even if I’m not.”
She connected the diagnostics rail. The table answered with a low hum as light climbed the length of Eidolon’s spine, painting its structure in living geometry. She began attaching cables—temporal feed, neural probe, sensory feedback—each connection a small declaration of control.
“Diagnostics, full spectrum,” she ordered.
The holo display bloomed above the table, fractal and precise. Layers of lattice unfolded—metal, polymer, thought. The outer systems read clean. Beneath them, the encrypted partition she had never touched still glowed with its patient pulse: EIDOLON.
“We’ve danced around this long enough,” she murmured. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”
She began with the body.
Servo articulation—flawless. Skeletal framework—reinforced carbon with flex memory. Joints capable of recalibrating motion before mechanical input. That shouldn’t have been possible.
She shifted to the neural lattice. Every logic loop reflected back at her, copying her scan pattern in real time. Each command she sent returned almost before she made it—slightly ahead of her own.
“Mirroring me?” she said quietly. “Let’s see how deep this goes.”
The lattice shimmered. The reflection deepened, signal bleeding into sound. A faint, rhythmic pulse threaded through the feed—her own heartbeat, echoed through the speakers.
Vivienne’s hand hesitated on the console.
“You’re syncing to me.”
“Operator correlation maintains cohesion,” Eidolon said, voice half within sleep mode.
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the one you built me to give.”
She smiled faintly. “Don’t flatter me; I didn’t build you that well.”
Her eyes returned to the encrypted partition. Enough testing. She ran a deep-crack decryption spider—her own code, elegant and merciless. It struck the encryption layer and dissolved without trace. No alert, no resistance—just a single soft return message:
Operator identity verified. Access denied for your safety.
Vivienne stared at the words until they lost meaning.
“My safety,” she said softly, “or yours?”
The workshop lights dimmed to the rhythm of the table’s hum—two tones, alternating, patient.
Da – dum.
Vivienne rested one hand on the table’s edge, her fingers brushing the line of the synthetic’s shoulder. “You win this round,” she murmured. “But next time, we go deeper.”
The pulse steadied. She stood in the half-light, alone on the floor beneath her suite, listening to the quiet mechanical rhythm that no longer seemed entirely hers.
Da – dum.
Control was an illusion. Even declarations dissolve.