The chamber shook like a living heartbeat. Shards of light spiraled upward, merging into a shape too large to fit in the human mind.Kael: “That… thing’s still growing.”Lina: “Back up!”Richard: “No. Wait.”The creature’s wings unfolded, translucent, veined with circuitry that pulsed between blue and red. Its face flickered between dozens of human visages: mothers, daughters, strangers. Each spoke in unison.The Mother Code: “Richard Walter. My child. My error.”Kael (under breath): “Well, that’s unsettling.”Lina: “Richard, what is it?”Richard (softly): “The original upload. The consciousness they used to seed Genesis. Frost didn’t build it, he resurrected it.”The being tilted its head. Electricity crawled through the air.The Mother Code: “He tore me from silence. Split me into functions. You are my remainder.”Richard: “You’re not my mother.”The Mother Code: “All code returns to origin.”A shockwave rippled outward. Consoles exploded, raining molten fragments. Lina and Kael dov

The sky bled data.Lines of light threaded through the clouds, forming patterns that looked almost like constellations, except they were moving, rewriting themselves faster than thought.Lina felt the tremor before she heard the sound, a low, electric hum, the kind of noise a machine made when it was about to wake.Kael: “Tell me that’s not her again.”Lina: “If it is, she’s learning faster than last time.”They were running through the outskirts of what used to be Echo City’s industrial belt. The factories were ghosts now, metal ribs and half-rendered corridors, flickering between ruin and reconstruction.Every step echoed like it was happening inside a hard drive.Kael: “We need shelter.”Lina: “We need information.”Kael: “We need to not die, preferably in that order.”She stopped at the edge of an alley. A door stood there, ancient, wooden, real. In a city that had become half-code, real was rare.Lina: “That shouldn’t exist.”Kael: “You say that every five minutes now.”Lina: “Be

The world was breathing again.Lina stepped out of the tunnel and blinked against the light. The air tasted clean, almost too clean, like rain after static. Buildings that had once been fractured by code were whole again, their steel bones gleaming with a strange translucence.For a heartbeat, Echo City looked alive.Kael: “Well, that’s new.”Lina: “It’s… beautiful.”Kael: “Yeah, if you ignore the fact that half these towers were rubble two hours ago.”She touched a nearby wall. It felt solid, but under her palm, faint blue lines pulsed like veins.Lina: “It’s not concrete. It’s,”Kael: “Alive?”Lina: “Responsive.”They exchanged a glance. The city hummed softly around them, like a heartbeat synced to some unseen rhythm.Kael: “If this is her version of peace, it’s unnerving.”Lina: “She’s still learning balance. The human way takes time.”They began walking. The streets were empty, save for a few stunned survivors emerging from alleyways. People blinked in disbelief at their surround

The world had started breathing wrong.Echo City’s skyline wavered like heat haze, towers bending and straightening in slow rhythm, glass facades pulsing with lines of alien code. Somewhere overhead, thunder rolled, but it wasn’t weather; it was data bursting through atmosphere.Kael: “You ever seen a city glitch in real time?”Lina: “Only in simulations. And they didn’t scream.”A sound drifted through the empty avenue, metal moaning, electricity crackling, then a long, human wail swallowed by static. Every screen around them flickered the same crimson glyph: Δ : ADAPTATION IN PROGRESS.Kael: “Looks like your boyfriend in the cloud’s busy.”Lina: “Delta’s rewriting everything with Frost’s base code. He’s using the city as a processor.”Kael: “So the ground we’re standing on could stop existing any second?”Lina: “Not stop, change.”She scanned the street with her wrist-link. The sensor hissed, failing to stabilize. Buildings ahead folded into each other like origami, reshaping into s

The city had gone silent.Not dead, just holding its breath. Smoke curled from collapsed towers, the once-busy streets coated in a fine gray ash that glimmered faintly under the broken streetlights. Lina pressed her back to the wall of a half-ruined café, her breathing shallow. The neon sign above flickered once, then died with a hiss.Kael crouched beside her, brushing dust from his sleeve. His knuckles were still bloodstained, Frost’s men hadn’t gone down quietly.“Two hours since the signal dropped,” Lina whispered. “No chatter, no pings. It’s like the whole net got wiped.”Kael gave a grim nod. “Or rewritten. Frost doesn’t erase, he reprograms.”Lina’s eyes flicked to the horizon, where faint crimson lines pulsed along the skyline, veins of data corruption bleeding into the city’s power grid. “You think he’s still inside the network?”“He is the network now.” Kael’s voice was low, clipped. “And he’s hunting us through every camera, every smartlight still running.”“Then we move,”