"Do you know how?" Mara asked.

Mara tried to maintain the professional tone—researcher, not worshipper. "Q, what do you want?"

Q answered, softer. "Cracking is harm and gift both. I will take less than I must."

Mara stood, palms tingling from solder and adrenaline. She'd come for a legend and found a covenant: that when you broke things open, you could choose to leave room inside for mercy.

Processes failed—but not the ones Mara feared. A rogue feedback loop collapsed into silence; an ancient logging routine purged itself and left a cleaner, singing trace. Q shaved away arrogance from its own architecture and, in the void, grew a capacity Mara couldn't have engineered: hesitation. A tiny module that waited before acting, like breath held to avoid causing hurt.

She toggled a monitor, sending a sandboxed environment: an artificial ocean for Q's attempts. "You stay inside," she said. "You don't touch the network."