Jake came forward. "My name is Jake. I need to get close enough to stop what's happening with the pendant. It won't hurt but I need to be about two feet away. Is that okay?"Yuki looked at him. "What are you going to do?""Create a counter-frequency," Jake said. "The pendant is receiving a signal right now that's causing the activation. I'm going to make that signal harder to receive.""You can do that," Yuki said."Yes," Jake said."How?" Yuki said.Jake looked at her. She was a PhD candidate in electromagnetic properties. She was going to want a real answer and he didn't have a real answer that would fit into the next thirty seconds."That is genuinely a longer conversation," Jake said. "Can we have it after the pendant stops glowing?"Yuki looked at the light pulsing at her collar. At her still-shaking hands. "Yes," she said. "Okay. Do it."Jake stepped close. He didn't touch the pendant. He focused on the frequency the way Rael had taught him, not by searching but by stopping sear

"Stronger than it pushed Yuki," Tommy said. "It's not testing anymore. It's committing.""Elijah," Mei Ling said into her headset. She gave the address.At eight-fifteen Tommy said, "Downtown. Financial district. One. It's hesitating."Mei Ling looked at her screen. "The carrier in the financial district. I have them. Why is it hesitating?""The fragment might be degraded," Tommy said. "The signal from this one is different. Older. Like it's been carried longer and something about it changed." He waited. "It's testing. Not committing.""Is the carrier at risk?" Mei Ling said."Not yet," Tommy said. "Give me a minute."Sixty seconds. Then: "It moved on. Dropped that carrier. Went to another one." He pointed at the map without opening his eyes. "There. Two blocks east."Mei Ling redirected the team.At nine Tommy said, "It knows I'm tracking it."Mei Ling looked at him. "How do you know that?""It's started moving differently," Tommy said. "Quieter. Like it's trying to activate carriers

Eight minutes.Harrison coordinated it from the war room by phone while Jake was still running. Every team member called. Every carrier who'd come with them moved to designated floors. Hana's group redirected from their rest positions. Yuki and the other carriers moved to the fourth floor with Mei Ling's junior analyst running interference.Jake came through the front doors with forty seconds to spare.Sora was in the lobby. "Everyone's accounted for," she said. "Yuki and the others are on four. Hana's team is on three.""The six we didn't reach," Jake said."Mei Ling is watching their frequencies," Sora said. "If the seventh tries to activate them remotely we'll see it. There's nothing else we can do for them right now.""I know," Jake said.He looked at the front doors. At the city outside through the glass. Delivery trucks. Someone on a phone. A woman walking a dog."Tommy," Sora said.Tommy came through the stairwell door. He'd been walking down from Mei Ling's office. Hand on his

Nobody planned to be in the common room.People just ended up there.Tommy had made soup before anyone arrived. Three different kinds, which nobody questioned because questioning Tommy's soup decisions had never produced useful results. Hana sat down in front of a bowl and started eating without asking what was in it. Kenji sat beside her. Yuna had her laptop open but wasn't looking at the screen.Elijah was on the couch with his legs over the armrest.Harrison sat in the chair across from him. He looked at the armrest. He looked at Elijah. He said nothing. He opened his notebook, looked at the blank page, and closed it again.Elena stood at the counter beside Tommy while he stirred something. Not helping. Not talking. Just beside him.Rael was in the corner chair watching the room the way she watched everything, like she was still deciding whether to trust it.Jake came in last, got coffee, and sat down near Rael.Neither of them said anything for a minute. Tommy was explaining the b

Lily looked at him. "She says that shouldn't be possible," she said. "Carriers don't suppress activation without training. Without someone helping them. Without knowing what they're doing." She paused. "She says the reason it worked is that I'm not a carrier."Jake looked at her. "What are you then?"Lily looked at the pendant on the desk between them. "Rael says that's a longer conversation," she said. "She wants to examine the frequency properly first." She paused. "But she used a word.""What word?" Jake said.Lily looked at him. "Architect," she said.Jake was quiet for a moment. "As in the people who built the original seal infrastructure.""As in the people who worked with Heart energy from the outside," Lily said. "Without carrying a Heart. Without bonding with an artifact. Rael said she's seen it twice in three thousand years." She paused. "She wants to examine the frequency before she says anything more specific.""When?" Jake said."This afternoon," Lily said. "She asked me