Jonas Kent preferred mornings that began in silence. No phone calls. No voices. Just the low hum of servers and the view from his penthouse, Atlanta stretched beneath him like a chessboard waiting for the first move.He stood before the glass wall, coffee cooling in his hand, eyes fixed on the river of cars threading through the streets below.A predator’s patience lived in him; motion never fooled him into thinking there was progress. The intercom clicked.“Sir, a new proposal came through Wilcrest’s secure inbox,” his assistant said. “From a Mr. Reed. The file is marked urgent.”Kent’s mouth twitched. “Reed,” he repeated, almost tasting the name. “Forward it.”Moments later, the document opened on his monitor. Contract figures, investment structures, asset recovery projections, all impeccably built. Almost too impeccable.He leaned back in his chair, scanning the lines the way a surgeon studies a wound. The Moores’ signature was at the bottom, tentative, desperate. His smile sharpen

Morning light barely reached the windows when Malik called Elena to his office. The city outside looked washed out, drained of color; inside, everything was too quiet.She came in with a tablet under her arm, her usual confidence replaced by the tired focus of someone who hadn’t slept. “You wanted me?” she asked.He gestured to the monitor on his desk. “Your access key triggered the decoy file last night.”She blinked. “What?”“It wasn’t a minor ping,” he said evenly. “Full credentials, correct encryption, signature match. You were in the system.”“I wasn’t even here,” she said, shaking her head. “You know that.”Malik studied her face. Calm. Direct. Either she was innocent, or she’d learned to hide it. He turned the screen toward her; the lines of code glowed faintly in the dim light.“That’s my signature,” she whispered. “But it’s impossible.”“It’s not impossible,” Malik said quietly. “It’s engineered. Kent’s replicating us.”She stepped closer to the desk, looking at the data. “Ho

By dawn, Malik was back in the data lab. A storm was rolling over Atlanta again, low thunder, flashes of light that made the monitors flare white.On one of them, the algorithm’s code pulsed and shifted, lines rewriting themselves faster than human eyes could follow.Elena entered with two coffees and a stack of diagnostic reports. “It’s accelerating,” she said, setting everything down. “Replication’s up thirty percent since last night.”Malik didn’t look away from the screen. “It knows we’re watching.”She frowned. “It can’t know. It’s code.”He turned to her, eyes hollow from no sleep. “You’ve seen what it does. It mirrors us. Every time we open a file, it mimics the behavior. We’re teaching it how we think.”Raymond joined them, voice rough. “So it’s learning faster the harder we fight.”“Exactly,” Malik said. “We can’t outpace it, we have to trick it.”Elena sat, typing rapidly. “How long before it hits the threshold?”“Four hours, maybe less,” she said. “Once the clone stabilizes

The hum grew louder. What had been a faint vibration in the walls now throbbed like a heartbeat trying to rise from the dead.The old processors flickered in uneven sequence, casting pale light that crawled across the concrete. Elena’s hand hovered over the keyboard. “It’s reinitializing itself.”Malik stood behind her, jaw clenched. “Then pull it offline.”She typed fast, commands flashing, error lines stacking. “It’s not responding. It’s drawing power from somewhere else.”Raymond checked the breakers on the far wall. “These aren’t even connected to the main grid. He’s using independent generators.”“Cut them,” Malik said.Raymond pulled the main lever. The hum dipped, then surged higher, louder, like something alive refusing to die.“Jesus,” he whispered. “It’s compensating.”Elena’s monitor blinked. A new window opened on its own. Words typed themselves across the screen, slow and deliberate: Did you think I wouldn’t prepare for this?Elena stepped back. “He left an active loop, a

By morning, Malik was already in the conference suite, staring at the skyline again. Elena stood in the doorway, watching him through the glass before he noticed her.He hadn’t touched his coffee. His eyes didn’t blink often enough. “Board call in ten,” she said softly.He turned, smiled like a man remembering how. “Right. Ten.”“I’ll handle the setup.”He nodded, distracted, gaze slipping back to the window. When she left, she didn’t go to the boardroom. She went to the subfloor data hub instead.The tech team had been running quiet checks since the tower shutdown, but nobody had gone deeper than surface scans.Elena logged in, locked the door, and pulled up the raw access reports. The screens cast thin light across her face.Dozens of entries scrolled by, every file restored, every terminal reconnected. All clean. Too clean. She opened the mirror logs manually. Nothing.Then she saw it: a single metadata tag with Malik’s user ID, timestamped an hour before dawn. USER: M.CARTER / PAT