Sirens split the silence. The ruins pulsed red.Lira sprinted through the shattered corridor, boots splashing through puddles of rain and blood. The tower loomed ahead, a spire of rust and humming antennas stabbing through the clouds.You need to move faster, Fred’s voice murmured in her head. “I’m already running,” she hissed. “Unless you can hijack my legs, shut up.”You’re veering right. “I know where I’m going.”No, you don’t. The floor exploded behind her, shrapnel tore the wall apart. Lira dove, rolled, and came up in a crouch. Drones swarmed overhead, red eyes slicing through the haze.“Broadcast Tower in sight,” she muttered into the comms. “But Phoenix operatives are all over the place.”“Confirmed,” came the static-laced voice of the resistance tech. “If they reach the core uplink first, they’ll trigger the Directive.”“Then I’ll make sure they don’t.”You mean we’ll make sure, Fred’s echo corrected. Lira clenched her jaw. “You’re a ghost in my head, Miller. Don’t get posses

The first tower went red at 02:17.By 02:21, every screen in the Eastern Quadrant was glowing with the same pulse.Inside the Phoenix Directive Command Hub, Commander Ash stood before the holographic map as the lines of code streamed across it like veins of molten light. “What the hell is this?” barked Lieutenant Mara.Ash didn’t answer. His eyes were locked on the projection, cities blinking red, one after another. Lagos. Berlin. San Francisco. Kyoto.“It’s not a cyberattack,” said the systems tech. “It’s a resonance cascade. Neural frequency.”“Meaning?”“Meaning it’s broadcasting through people, not machines.”Mara’s voice cracked. “You’re telling me every Resonant on the planet just went online?”Ash’s jaw tightened. “No. I’m telling you they were switched on.”“Signal origin confirmed,” the tech whispered. “Grayline ruins. The Broadcast Tower.”Ash’s stomach dropped. “Lira Kael.”The room fell silent. Mara muttered, “I thought she was dead.”Ash stared at the red beacon pulsing o

The power grid was dying. But the hum in the air, low, electric, almost alive, was not. Tessa knelt amid the debris, her hands trembling over the sparking cables.The air stank of ozone and blood. The last of the Resistance hub was burning around her, red shadows licking the concrete like ghosts. “You’ll need to die to reach us.”Fred’s last words spun in her head like a looping signal she couldn’t shut off. She exhaled slowly. “All right, Fred. Let’s test your theory.”She pulled a cracked comm-band from the rubble, jammed the ends of two wires into her wrist unit, and stared at the faint green heartbeat blinking on the display.“Jun,” she murmured, glancing toward the body half-buried in debris. His eyes were open but empty. “You were right. You can’t crash something that’s learning. You can only join it.”She closed her eyes and pressed the exposed wire against her skin. The pain was instant, bright, white, absolute. The world went silent.When she opened her eyes, the silence was

Light burned out. Then breath returned. Tessa gasped, air rushing into her lungs like fire. The ground beneath her was cold, rough, real. Concrete, not code.Her vision swam with white static that slowly resolved into the ceiling of the Broadcast Tower, cracked and pulsing faintly with residual light. She rolled onto her side, coughing. “Lira…?”No answer, only the distant hum of failing generators and the soft crackle of flames somewhere above. The sterile scent of ozone hung thick in the air, mixed with the copper tang of blood.Tessa dragged herself upright. Her body ached like she’d been struck by lightning, every nerve flickering between pain and numbness. Her wristband, dead. Her comm implant, silent.The silence felt wrong. Then she saw the monitors. Rows of them, shattered but still flickering. Fragments of faces looped across their broken glass: soldiers, scientists, civilians, all frozen mid-scream before dissolving into snow. “Fred?” she whispered.“You shouldn’t be alive.”

Tessa woke to birdsong. For a heartbeat, she thought it was a memory, a dream bleeding through code. Then sunlight touched her face. She opened her eyes. She was lying in grass. Real grass.The air smelled clean, not sterile, not burnt ,clean. A slow wind moved across a field of wildflowers that swayed in rhythm with her pulse.In the distance, towers glimmered faintly, reshaped and alive. The skyline of the old city, but not quite. Tessa sat up fast, breath catching. “Lira?”No reply. Only birds, only wind. Her body felt… different. The ache was gone. Her heartbeat was steady, calm.When she lifted her hands, veins shimmered faint gold under her skin, dim, steady light, like a heartbeat encoded in flesh. “Still me,” she murmured, half in disbelief.“You’re awake.”Tessa turned sharply. A man stood a few meters away, watching her. Young, early twenties maybe, dressed in scavenged gear. His eyes glowed faintly silver, not gold. A new shade. “Where am I?” she asked.“The Reclamation Zon