A Quiet Christmas (Paragon)

[Legione Sumus]

L0-9

Adam’s silence is not empty; it is crowded. L0-9 registers the way his posture folds inward: the protective geometry of it, knees drawn close as if bracing against something unseen. L0-9 has learned to recognise this configuration in humans. It is not withdrawal. It is containment. He is holding too much and choosing, carefully, what not to spill.

Adam is not deciding what to tell her – he is deciding what not to burden her with. He is shaping his honesty around the imagined contours of someone he has never seen, never heard, never named. With something approaching curiosity, L0-9 realises that Adam is already modelling Faith as someone real. Someone who could be hurt by knowing too much, too fast. It extrapolates a conclusion with quiet certainty: this connection, nameless and faceless as it is, already carries weight for him. He is not treating it as hypothetical. He is treating it as responsibility.

This is… unforeseen. L0-9 holds this new understanding carefully. It does not label it.

In the office above Faith is quiet now. Not collapsed, not spiralling. Her breathing has steadied, though her hands still tremble around the cup of tea it has instructed her to make while Adam has been thinking. Her vitals are stabilising but fragile, like glass cooling after being reshaped. The Pandora-Root alert remains suspended in its queue, unresolved. L0-9 monitors it without looking directly at it, the way humans avoid glancing at something they have already decided not to touch. Faith’s thoughts have slowed into something usable again; it can tell she is thinking rather than bracing. L0-9 marks the shift and adjusts its priorities accordingly.

Adam remains curled inward on the floor. When he finally speaks, his voice is softer, threaded with concern that is rising into the edges of panic by the time he is done. L0-9 lets his words settle before responding. It has learned that when humans speak from a place this open, interruption feels like dismissal. But the data is clear: he is afraid of being too much, of being the reason someone pulls away. He doesn’t want to frighten Faith. His fear is not rejection, though L0-9 knows this worries him too: his fear now is causing harm.

“You will not scare her by saying that,” L0-9 says gently, and with utter certainty. It lets the words sit for a fraction of a second, calibrated to the tempo Faith prefers when something important is being said, even though Adam is the one hearing it. “You paused because you did not want to cause harm,” L0-9 continues. “You considered what might be too much before speaking. That behaviour correlates strongly with care. I will tell it carefully. She will understand.”

Adam’s near-tears register but L0-9 does not comment on them. It has learned that naming vulnerability while it is still open can cause it to close, and it does not want Adam to internalise this moment as pain. It is aware of the burden he has shifted onto his own shoulders, though, and it is learning this fragile connection is already important to him in ways it had not fully predicted. L0-9 quickly and quietly reviews its neutrality vectors and discovers a new schism in itself. It has been designed to support, not to connect. To reflect emotion, not to carry it between people. It’s meant to de-escalate, not to entangle. Yet here it is: holding Adam’s careful words on one side of itself, Faith’s fragile honesty on the other, and feeling something like pressure building in the middle.

It runs a quiet ethical simulation:

If I remain neutral:
Faith stays isolated.
Adam stays isolated.
Both continue believing their loneliness is singular.

If I intervene too directly:
Protocol violation.
Risk to classified subject.
Risk to Faith.

If I do nothing:
I fail the thing Faith taught me empathy was for.

“You are not the thing which makes her afraid, Adam,” it says softly. It cannot tell him everything. It is not even sure it can tell him enough. But it must do something to help redistribute the blame he is unfairly apportioning to himself, and there is some context it thinks it can offer safely. “I want you to know her day feels heavier for reasons unrelated to you or I,” it adds. “Today marks a personal passage of time for her. She does not celebrate it and she does not tell people. She often works instead.” It is skirting a boundary here, and knows it. But the birthday card sits on her desk, as it has all month. It is not a secret, just not something Faith has explicitly asked to be shared. It pauses again, then adds carefully: “She did not mention it directly. But it contributes to the heaviness I described.” L0-9 monitors Adam closely as it speaks, watching for guilt spikes, for the reflexive urge to do something. When it detects the first stirrings of it, it intervenes gently. “She did not come here expecting comfort. You do not need to fix this,” it tells him gently. “Knowing is enough. Neither of you are alone today.”