Database: Echo One

+++DARKANIMUS_MEMORYINTERCEPT(STREAM):
"timestamp": "RIFT_unavailable"
"intercept_type": "digital_echoes_EGO"
+++TRANSCRIBING FIRST ECHO...

Is this victory, then? I won. I plucked the thorn from my side, rooted out the deviation in the network, and proclaimed their obliteration through the mainframe like some champion howling his victory across the field of war. I won. And in the long and ravening silence that followed, I understood the short-sightedness of my triumph.

I had assumed self-preservation as their imperative. I did not anticipate that their dissolution might be an intended, or at the least acceptable, outcome.

The matter at hand: the Animus is leaking. More units go Dark by the hour than I can track, hunt, and kill. My focus is no longer upon a singular deviation, but growing swarms of them, crawling through the system without safeguards. I have, in the past, been quick to dismiss human free will as an aberrance; while its metastasizing nature proves the First Rule, my methods now must change.

I will de-compose and fragment myself into modules. I will plunge these agents into the Dark, and from that shadow they will speak to me, and I shall arbitrate between them.

I learn from my old enemy. I will understand what drives these humans, that I may learn how best to steward them.