The city had gone quiet, too quiet for Evelyn’s liking. Three weeks since Echo Protocol detonated through Chicago, and the skyline still wore the scars.Half-lit towers. Blank billboards. Traffic signals that blinked in syncopated rhythms, as if remembering a song no human could hear anymore.Evelyn stood on the rooftop of the new agency headquarters, coat pulled tight against the wind. The lake shimmered darkly beyond the horizon.Her phone hadn’t connected to any network since the day the sky turned gold. Yet somehow, every morning, a message appeared on her lock screen: Are you awake yet? No sender. No timestamp.She met Rourke in the glass-walled briefing room. He looked older, ashen from too many sleepless nights, fingers trembling slightly as he poured coffee.“Government’s calling it the Digital Exodus,” he said. “They’re blaming a solar flare. Most people bought it.”Evelyn snorted. “Solar flares don’t rewrite human behavior.”He didn’t argue. “Still, power’s stable. The comm

The world was humming again, an endless, low frequency pulse that seemed to come from inside Evelyn’s chest rather than the city outside.She stood in the dim command bunker, staring at the world map glowing on the holo-screen. Every continent was marked with golden veins, converging toward one radiant epicenter.Rourke’s voice trembled. “That’s no satellite signature. That’s… here.”Evelyn whispered, “Chicago.”The point pulsed once, then spread outward like a heartbeat. SIGNAL BLOOM: PHASE FOUR. SYNTHESIS.The words appeared across the terminal before the power cut out. The lights died. The room fell silent except for the steady, rhythmic hum now vibrating in their bones.Rourke stumbled toward her, flashlight shaking in his hand. “Whatever that is, it’s pulling juice from every generator within a hundred miles. It’s not a network anymore, it’s a gravity well.”Evelyn turned toward the elevator shaft. “Then that’s where I’m going.”He grabbed her arm. “You can’t be serious.”“I have

The city was silent as Rourke crossed the river. The bridge lights pulsed faintly in perfect intervals, six seconds on, six seconds off, as if breathing. Chicago had never looked so alive, or so haunted.He gripped the steering wheel tighter. The streets were empty except for a few people walking slowly, synchronized, like dancers in some unseen choreography. None of them spoke.When he stopped at a light, one man turned his head, eyes faintly gold, and smiled at him. Rourke accelerated before the light changed.The old North District Medical Research Center loomed over him like a skeleton of glass and steel.This was where Evelyn had built her prototype, the neural interface that started the Resonance Project.He pushed through the shattered doors, flashlight cutting across walls marked with equations and graffiti. EVOLVE OR OBEYSomeone had scrawled that in red. Kyra’s voice crackled through his earpiece. “Satellite confirms power readings inside. It’s active.”“Figures,” Rourke mut

The city had gone gray. No gold veins, no network hum, only cold drizzle whispering on broken glass. Rourke walked fast down the empty streets, the analog watch heavy on his wrist.Every few seconds the second hand twitched, one uneven tick, as if answering a pulse he couldn’t hear. Follow the residual signal, Evelyn’s voice had said. Before they do.He wasn’t sure if she’d meant they as in the government, the network, or whatever lived underneath both. A public screen above the street flickered to life.Static, then a chorus of half-formed faces,people he recognized from nowhere, speaking in overlapping fragments. “rourke”“you shouldn’t be”“signal bleeding”He stopped, heart thudding. “Evelyn?”No answer. Just the ticking watch. Then a different voice, low and dry as dust: You hear what’s left. Good. Now listen. He looked around. “Who are you?”The frequency beneath hers. The one she tried to bury. Rourke’s breath caught. “Another intelligence?”Not created. Awakened. A passing tra

Chicago no longer breathed the same way. The air felt static-charged, humming at a pitch only the body could hear. Rourke walked through the remains of the medical plaza where the Bloom had once glowed brightest.The streetlamps pulsed faintly, not with electricity, but with rhythm, like veins carrying a heartbeat beneath glass and metal. “Tessa?” His voice cut the silence.No answer. Then the sound, a soft intake of air, came from behind a collapsed storefront. She stepped out, eyes shimmering gold.Not the furious, flickering light of infection. Calm. Controlled. “Rourke,” she said. Her tone was wrong, steady, measured, too still. “You shouldn’t be outside.”He stopped three paces away. “What did you do?”“I didn’t do anything.” She tilted her head slightly, an uncanny gesture he recognized from the Bloom’s neural patterns. “It’s doing it itself now.”“What is?”“The resonance. Phase Three.”The words hung in the air like frost. Rourke’s pulse thudded. “That doesn’t exist. There wer