Sirens bled through the city like veins of light. Chicago, perfect, synchronized, harmonious, had begun to glitch. Rourke ran through the storm of gold reflections, pulling Eli close against the crush of panicked citizens.The people moved in mirrored rhythm, their eyes flickering between calm gold and static. The illusion of unity was breaking. “Doctor,” Eli gasped, “they’re everywhere!”“I see them,” Rourke said, eyes darting to the rooftops. Drones hovered, their rotors whispering through the smog like insects.“Where’s the tower?”Eli pointed toward the skyline. The Echelon Spire loomed like a needle piercing the clouds, its surface pulsing faintly with the same resonance that once healed and now enslaved. “That’s where she is,” the boy said.Rourke nodded grimly. “Then that’s where we end it.”They cut through a maze of alleys and maintenance tunnels. Every step echoed with the hum of distant machinery, the Bloom’s heartbeat.Evelyn’s voice whispered through the static in his ear

The dawn over Chicago looked wrong. Too quiet. Too still. Eli crouched beneath the skeleton of a half-collapsed bridge, clutching his backpack against his chest.Above, the skyline shimmered with broken glass and smoke, yet the air itself hummed faintly, as if the city were breathing. He pressed two fingers to his temple. “Doctor… are you there?”Only static. Then, beneath it, a whisper, faint, rhythmic, more like a heartbeat than words. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.He looked around. A few survivors wandered the street, faces blank, steps synchronized. When a gust of wind swept past, they all turned their heads at once, as if responding to a signal only they could hear.Eli swallowed hard. “Not human… not yet.”A voice spoke from behind him. “They’re waking up.”He spun, knife drawn. It was a woman, mid-thirties, soot-streaked, eyes flickering gold and blue. “Who are you?”“Call me Mara,” she said. “You felt it too, didn’t you? The Pulse.”Eli hesitated. “I felt something.”Mara nodded slowly. “It

The tunnel angled down until it felt endless. The air thickened with heat; every breath tasted of copper. Far behind them, the roar of collapsing metal faded into a distant heartbeat.Cole’s flashlight cut a narrow line through the dark. “How far does this go?”Eli wiped sweat from his face. “All the way to the city grid. The old maintenance maps showed a chamber under the river.”Cole grunted. “You sure we’re not walking straight into its mouth?”Eli didn’t answer. The hum inside his head had grown steadier, one pulse every two seconds, perfectly timed with his heartbeat. “Doctor,” he whispered under his breath. “I’m still listening.”A flicker of gold lit the walls ahead. Lines of conduit blinked to life, one after another, like eyes opening. Cole swore softly. “It’s tracking us.”“No,” Eli said. “He is.”The hum shifted; faint words threaded through it. “Deeper, Eli… follow the current…”Cole spun toward him. “You hear something?”“He’s guiding us.”Cole shook his head. “You don’t

Eli’s pulse hammered in his ears. “Created me?”Rourke stepped forward, hand outstretched as if approaching a frightened animal. “Eli, listen”“No,” Eli snapped. “Say it clearly. What did you do to me?”The suspended droplets around them trembled like glass. The Echo watched, serene. “He didn’t just alter the network.”“Stop,” Rourke warned.“He altered you.”Cole swore under his breath. “Kid… don’t let either of them”Eli’s voice cracked. “Rourke. Tell me.”The doctor looked shattered, eyes hollow, guilt spilling through the flickering projection. “You were dying when they brought you in. A neural collapse, total, irreversible. No chart. No pulse. You were slipping away.”Eli shook his head. “My parents told me”“They were lied to,” Rourke said quietly. “I lied to them.”The Echo stepped closer, her presence glowing faintly against the frozen chamber. “He built a signal interface inside your mind. A living architecture. A failsafe for himself.”Rourke’s voice cracked. “It wasn’t like

The city felt it first. A quiver. A pulse. A tremor that didn’t come from the ground but from inside the minds of eight million people at once.Above the underground chamber, skylines flickered as if someone had reached up and pinched the lights of the world between two fingers.Traffic ground to a halt. Pedestrians froze mid-step. Screens across the city flashed white for a half second, just long enough for every citizen to look up with the same, synchronized shiver.Then the feedback hit. A wave of static rattled every device simultaneously. Drones dropped from flight paths. Transit rails shut down. Comms sputtered.The Pulse grid, once golden, warm, and centralized, fractured into a static-laced mosaic of gold, blue, and… something else.A third color. White. Sharp. Alive. It rippled outward like a shockwave in slow motion. And at the center of that expanding ring, Eli.Eli staggered forward as the pylons around him realigned. Their harmonics had shifted, no longer gold for the Ec