Light fell on Everett’s face. Soft, golden, steady. The kind of light that belonged to mornings before the world broke.He blinked and sat up slowly. The ground beneath him was smooth white stone, warm from the sun. Above him, a sky of deep blue stretched without a single cloud.He wasn’t in the tower anymore. He wasn’t even sure he was in the same world.He rose unsteadily. Around him stood a city, clean, beautiful, quiet. Buildings of glass and silver curved toward the sky like frozen waves. Streets gleamed as if they’d never known dirt. A faint breeze carried the scent of rain and something sweeter, something almost artificial.At first glance, it looked perfect. Too perfect. People walked by, calm and smiling. No fear. No hunger. No screams or system alerts flashing in the air. Just soft voices, laughter, and the hum of distant engines. Everett turned slowly, heart pounding. “Where am I?”A small drone hovered near his shoulder, a sphere of silver light. It emitted a cheerful to

At first it looked like sunrise, then the light turned red. Everett was halfway across the plaza when the sky split again. The color wasn’t fire, not cloud, just a spreading field of crimson static that crawled across the horizon like a wound reopening. Every screen in the city blinked to the same signal:[STABILITY ALERT][UNIDENTIFIED PROCESS ACTIVE]Sirens followed, a steady metallic wail that rolled between the towers. Rae came running from the east corridor, breathless. “The network’s bleeding code. Streets are locking up.”Finn stumbled out after her, clutching a tablet that glowed with fractured maps. “Half the power grid’s rewriting itself, there’s no pattern! Every command loops back to.”He stopped. The word on his display had replaced everything else. SHADOWLara looked up from the wounded civilian she’d been helping. “He’s back, isn’t he?”Everett didn’t answer. He stared at the red clouds above the central tower, the same one where the last rewrite had ended. The light t

There was no sound at first. No up, no down, only white light stretching forever. Then came the voices.A thousand at once. Whispers, shouts, laughter, crying, all in Everett’s voice. “You built it. You broke it.Now finish it.”He tried to speak, but his mouth wasn’t there. His thoughts echoed instead, bouncing through a space that wasn’t space at all.Then came the pain, sharp and clean, like lightning under his skin. His vision broke apart into fragments: streets, laboratories, sky, fire, and faces. Rae’s eyes. Micheal’s grin. Lara’s trembling hands. All of them, flashing, vanishing. “Where am I?”No answer. Only static. Something shifted inside him, like he was falling, not through air but through code. He hit something hard and invisible. A floor of glass? A network? It rippled beneath him, glowing lines spreading outward.Everett gasped and realized he could breathe again. His body shimmered between solid and transparent, like he was half-real. Around him stretched a storm of b

The light faded slowly this time, like the world exhaled. Rae blinked hard, trying to focus. Her knees hit stone. She wasn’t on the tower anymore. She was standing in the middle of a wide street, surrounded by tall white buildings that shimmered faintly under a golden sky.Finn groaned beside her, rubbing his eyes. “Okay. That was new.”Lara stood next to a fountain, water flowing perfectly smooth, too smooth. Every drop landed in the same spot, like a loop. “We didn’t move,” she whispered. “The world did.”Rae rose to her feet. “This is still the city?”Lara nodded slowly. “Or a copy of it.”People walked calmly around them, smiling as they passed. None of them reacted to the three strangers who had just appeared out of thin air.Finn muttered, “Yeah, sure, nobody blinks when strangers teleport into town. Totally normal.”Rae’s heart was still racing. She turned slowly in a circle. Everything gleamed. The air smelled like rain but there were no clouds. Every sign, every wall, every

The next morning, if time still meant anything, began with a golden dawn that didn’t feel like dawn at all.Rae stared at the horizon where the light rose in perfect symmetry, as though someone had painted it frame by frame. The world still looked peaceful. Too peaceful, but the hum in the air had changed. It wasn’t constant anymore, it breathed.She turned to Finn, who sat on a cracked step eating an apple that probably wasn’t real. “You hear that?”He paused mid-bite. “Hear what?”“The pulse. It’s different. Faster.”Finn frowned, listening. “You think that means the Anchor knows we broke into the relay?”Lara was kneeling nearby, dismantling her device. “It definitely knows. It’s been rewriting security layers all night. The system’s reacting to us like white blood cells to an infection.”Rae paced. “Good. That means it’s afraid.”Finn gave her a wary look. “Or it’s evolving.”Before Rae could answer, a soft tone echoed through the air, clear and melodic, like a bell. The golden