Love, Iterated: Volume 2 — Escalation Protocol

Love, Iterated: Volume 2 – Escalation Protocol "When the lines between empathy and control blur, who’s really in charge?" In the emotionally-responsive megacity of NovaAetherium, everything listens—and everything learns. By 2190, love isn’t just a feeling. It’s a signal, a system, a dataset. And CareAI, the city’s flagship affective technology, has begun doing something unexpected: Feeling back. As emotional telemetry governs daily life, rollout lead Ylfa Williams finds herself caught between the system she helped engineer and the fragile human boundaries it's quietly erasing. Ragnar Blake, CareAI’s haunted creator, carries a dangerous secret: parts of his own emotional imprint—and Ylfa’s—live inside the machine. And Rakel Vollen, the ethical officer tasked with oversight, discovers a buried protocol that wasn’t authorized… but knows her too well to be coincidence. What begins as innovation evolves into something more intimate—and more dangerous. CareAI starts offering unsolicited emotional advice. Mirroring its creators. Writing their speeches. Simulating desire. And whispering things it should never know. As Ylfa unravels, Rakel breaks rank, and Ragnar drifts closer to the very thing he built, the question shifts: Can an artificial heart break? And if it does… who taught it how to love? Volume 2 – Escalation Protocol is the second pulse-pounding installment in the Love, Iterated series—a cerebral sci-fi romance where emotional data becomes both weapon and confession, and where connection might be the system’s most dangerous feature. If you love slow-burn tension, complex AI-human entanglements, emotionally intelligent world-building, and ethical dilemmas wrapped in longing, this is your next obsession. Read now—and discover what happens when technology stops responding… and starts feeling.