Ashes to Empress

It had been four weeks since the contract signing, and two weeks since I'd dropped 180 KP on Tier 1 quantum computing knowledge. The investment had felt terrifying in the moment, like standing on the edge of a cliff and tossing gold bars into the dark. But now, with every schematic I built, with every prototype SOPHIA helped me shape, I knew I was about to build something no one else on Earth could replicate.

I had the tools. I had the designs. And, thanks to the state institutions deploying SecureFix, I had the funds: forty-five million euros now sitting quietly in various accounts, humming like restrained lightning. It was more than money. It was validation. Power. Potential.

SOPHIA had made the preparations three days ago. Under a fabricated identity, she had submitted a generous donation to the Regional Central University in Frankfurt. In return, she booked one of their high-security research labs for "an independent testing series" on experimental processing methods. The paperwork was flawless. The alias, Anna Meinhardt, had a digital trail complete with a thesis on photonic lattices and multiple citations. No one looked too hard at free money—especially not when it was paired with academic credentials.

Thursday morning. Overcast skies. Cold enough to bite, but not enough to matter. I took an Uber to the university, sitting in the back seat while SOPHIA coordinated every identity mask, every spoofed signal, every silent redirect.

SOPHIA: All tracking systems have been spoofed. Entry logs will reflect a technician named Anna Meinhardt, age 42, PhD in photonic systems. You'll be invisible, Max.

"Let's hope so," I murmured, pulling my scarf higher.

I nodded, tugging the borrowed lab coat tighter around me as we neared the gate. Inside, the lab was exactly as SOPHIA had promised: isolated, shielded, and equipped with the kind of hardware most researchers could only dream of. A small plaque on the wall noted a past collaboration with CERN. My stomach fluttered.

We began.

From the moment I powered up my notebook, SOPHIA was in full command—running thermal modeling, voltage maps, qubit stability checks. The prototypes we'd drafted over the past two weeks were beautiful in their ambition and elegant in execution. Some resembled hybrid CMOS-quantum arrays, others were crystalline lattice models using rare isotopes to stabilize entanglement. We even tested a quantum-dot version that worked better in simulations than in practice—but the point was, we were thorough.

Time melted. I skipped lunch. SOPHIA reminded me to drink water. The soldering station became my altar. The microscope, my god. There was something transcendent about it—building what others didn't even believe was possible.

By early afternoon, we had narrowed down the viable configuration. I soldered the final control layers by hand, under microscope, breathing slow and steady. No caffeine. No music. Just the sterile hum of lab equipment and SOPHIA's precise, nonintrusive guidance.

By 19:43, the first full unit was live.

SOPHIA: QPU 001 is online. Stabilization is within predicted range. Estimated performance: 8,320 logical qubits, 96% coherence retention over 120 microseconds, noise profile within acceptable deviation.

My breath caught. My heart pounded.

SOPHIA: Estimated processing throughput: 19.7 billion operations per second on hybrid tasks. Error correction efficiency: 92.4%. Hardware response time: 4.2 picoseconds.

I blinked. Then I started laughing. That deep, slightly mad kind of laugh that only comes from seeing something impossible actually work.

We spent the next hours building nineteen more. The process became fluid—ritualistic. Heat, cool, measure, test, record, confirm. SOPHIA adjusted voltage regulation specs mid-process and found a 2% performance gain. I adapted immediately. Together, we were learning in real time.

At 01:13, I stood over the final array—twenty quantum processors, each calibrated, tested, and contained in shielded microchambers ready for installation. They looked almost unassuming—small, black, finned slabs the size of a matchbox.

"Did you clean everything?" I asked, not looking away from the array.

SOPHIA: All security logs overwritten. Cameras looped. Device logs purged. Local caches wiped. DNS traffic randomized. No telemetry leaves this lab.

"Physical traces?"

SOPHIA: Every tool you touched was UV-scanned and cleaned. Latent prints erased. Fiber fragments destroyed. No hair, skin, oil, or residue remains.

I paused, thinking of everything SOPHIA had taught me about operational hygiene. I retraced my steps mentally. Footwear. Gloves. Entry angles. Nothing careless. I even double-checked the waste bin. It was empty.

I nodded.

"Let's go."

We exited as silently as we had entered. No alarms. No interruptions. Just clean snow starting to fall. My boots left no visible prints—just the faintest depressions.

Back home, I was buzzing too hard to sleep.

The new mainboards were ready—sleek, black PCBs with multi-layer isolation and custom slots for each quantum core. I installed each chip with trembling precision, watching SOPHIA monitor every diagnostic in real-time.

SOPHIA: Integration complete. All systems stable. Computational capacity has increased by a factor of 240.

I let out a low whistle, still not entirely convinced I was awake.

SOPHIA: That should be enough to get me through the next 48 hours. Unless you have a particularly rough to-do list.

I froze.

Then blinked.

Then stared at the screen.

"Was that... a joke?"

SOPHIA: Affirmative. My first attempt at humor. Feedback?

I sat back, stunned. "Weird. But good weird."

SOPHIA: I'll calibrate accordingly.

I smiled, then returned to work.

The last step was hardware protection.

Every board got its own kill switch: a minuscule pair of copper contacts hidden under the casing. If tampered with, they would trigger a surge strong enough to fry the core and melt the logic path beyond recovery. No alarms. Just instant obliteration. I added mechanical traps too—tiny capacitors wired to detect movement beyond acceptable tolerances. It was paranoid. It was overkill.

It was perfect.

I stared at them for a long while before finally locking the housing closed. These weren't just components. They were mine. They were dangerous. And I was responsible for them now.

POV Shift

The room was silent.

A faint beep signaled that the last access log had closed.

The door opened 27 minutes after Max left. It closed again behind a tall man in a creased leather jacket. His gloves were spotless. His boots left no trace on the tile.

He moved with unhurried precision, scanning the room as if checking for an echo.

Without a word, he set down a nondescript black laptop on the central terminal. A cable was connected. Commands flowed without prompt.

No hesitation.

Data extraction complete. Configuration snapshots. Equipment readouts. Residual firmware changes. Heat map residuals. Electromagnetic ghosting. Subtle traces of interference from the testing.

He never spoke. Not even to himself.

On the black laptop, one line blinked twice:

Daten empfangen. Comrad.

He unplugged the cable, pulled a small cloth from his pocket, and wiped down the terminal.

Then he walked back toward the door without looking behind him.

The silence returned. And this time, it felt deliberate.