The city hadn’t changed.But somehow… everything felt different.The same streets that once felt ordinary now carried weight, like every shadow had meaning and every quiet corner was hiding something.Sainz noticed it too.She walked beside Kendrick, her steps more steady than before, but her eyes constantly moving, taking in everything like she was seeing the world properly for the first time in a long while.“…You trust her?” she asked after a while.Kendrick didn’t slow down.“Sia?”“Yeah.”A brief pause.“…I don’t think she trusts herself,” he replied.That wasn’t an answer.But somehow… it told her enough.Sainz nodded slightly, her fingers tightening briefly at her sides before relaxing again.Trust.That word felt distant to her now.StillShe kept walking.Sia’s apartment wasn’t far from the central district, tucked into a quieter part of the city where the noise didn’t reach as much.Kendrick stopped just outside the building, his eyes scanning the area once before stepping f

The knock lingered in the air long after the sound itself had faded, leaving behind a tension so thick it felt almost physical. None of them moved immediately. Even the air in the room seemed to pause, as if the space itself understood that whatever stood behind that door was not something ordinary.Kendrick’s gaze shifted toward the entrance, his expression calm but sharpened, every instinct already alert. Sia’s posture changed subtly beside him, her body angling just slightly, ready to react at the smallest shift. Sainz, however, felt it differently. The fear didn’t paralyze her this time, but it was there quiet, crawling under her skin, reminding her of everything she had already lost.Then the voice came again, softer now, almost patient.“I know you’re in there. You’ve never been very good at hiding, Kendrick.”There was something unsettling about the way he spoke not loud, not aggressive, just certain. Like he had already calculated every possible move they could make and dismis

The screen went dark, but the weight of the message remained.For several seconds, none of them moved, as if stepping away from that moment would somehow make it less real. The faint hum of the laptop was the only sound in the room, steady and indifferent, in sharp contrast to the storm of thoughts now building in all three of them.Sainz was the first to move, though it was barely noticeable. Her fingers curled slightly at her sides, her breathing uneven but controlled as she kept her eyes fixed on the blank screen. The image of her sister lingered in her mind, not as a memory this time, but as a warning.“She knew she was going to die,” Sainz said quietly.It wasn’t a question.Kendrick stood beside the table, his posture relaxed but his gaze sharp, already processing the implications behind everything they had just seen.“Yes,” he replied.Sia exhaled slowly, her arms still crossed as she leaned back slightly against the desk. “And she didn’t just accept it,” she added. “She planne

For a brief second, no one moved.The machines behind them pulsed with unstable energy, lights flickering in uneven rhythms as the system recalibrated itself. What should have been a disruption was turning into something else entirely something controlled, something adaptive.Kendrick saw it clearly now.They hadn’t attacked the system.They had trained it.“…Pull out,” he said quietly.Sia didn’t argue. She was already disconnecting her device, her movements fast but precise, even as her eyes kept darting toward the man standing across the room.But the moment she unpluggedThe system stabilized.Instantly.Like it had already learned everything it needed.The hum returned.Smooth.Perfect.Untouched.Sainz felt a chill run through her.“…That’s not normal.”“No,” Kendrick replied.“It’s not.”The man stepped forward slowly, his hands relaxed at his sides, his expression unchanged.“Now you understand,” he said. “Resistance alone won’t stop it.”Sia’s jaw tightened. “You’re building

The room felt smaller after his words.Not physically.But mentally.Like the space around Sainz had shifted, closing in with every thought she couldn’t ignore anymore. The projection in front of her continued to move—lines adjusting, patterns forming and reforming—but she barely saw it now. Her mind was somewhere else, stuck between disbelief and the uncomfortable pull of recognition.“A variable…” she repeated quietly, as if saying it out loud would make it sound less real.The man didn’t interrupt her this time. He simply watched, patient, like he had all the time in the world.Sainz’s gaze dropped briefly, her thoughts moving back—uninvited, but persistent. Moments she had brushed off before. Close calls that didn’t make sense. Situations that had resolved just slightly too perfectly. Decisions she made without fully understanding why… but that somehow worked out.Her chest tightened.“…No,” she said again, but softer now. “That doesn’t mean I’m controlling anything.”“You’re not