Miller had the locations mapped by seven in the morning.He'd stayed up after they got back from the Water Authority building, working from the addresses Ethan had given him, cross-referencing them against Ren's signal logs from the Water Authority installation. By the time Ethan came downstairs, Miller had a hand-drawn map on the back of three sheets of paper pushed together and taped at the corners."All four are infrastructure buildings," Miller said, pointing at the map without sitting down. "South District substation, East District pumping station, Central District emergency services depot, and a telecommunications relay building in the West District we hadn't touched yet." He looked up. "All of them retrofitted by Vale's government maintenance contracts before activation. All of them running relay signals we missed because they were low-output and piggybacking on existing infrastructure."Ethan looked at the map. The four locations were spread across the city — not clustered, de

Ren set up the contact through the Water Authority building's hardwired terminal — the same copper line Holt had been using, which Vale had confirmed was untraceable by Architect monitoring systems. It took forty minutes to route the connection to the Verton address and another ten for the line to pick up on the other end.Ethan was sitting at the table when it did."Administrator," a voice said. Female, clear, accent he couldn't immediately place — not quite West African, not quite European, somewhere in between. "I was starting to think the node shutdown was a coincidence.""It wasn't," Ethan said."I know. I've been watching your work in Sea City through the logic layer for about six weeks. The gear removals, the Holt situation, the relay shutdowns." A pause. "The boy.""Leo," Ethan said."Yes." Another pause, shorter. "He's further along than he knows. I could see it in the corrections he was making to the shelter architecture before you even identified him. The consistency was to

Ethan was already moving when Miller's second update came through."It's in the building," Miller said. "Ground floor. It came through the wall — not the door, the actual wall. Kaelen tried to hit it and his fist went through it.""Is Leo active?" Ethan said, picking up the pace."Seraphina has him on the fourth floor. She's keeping him running — small corrections, constant output." A pause. "The thing is tracking him. It's moving toward the stairs.""Kaelen," Ethan said."Already between it and the stairs," Miller said. "But he says—" A short pause and the sound of Miller relaying something. "He says he can feel it trying to read the building. Like something running a search."David had matched Ethan's pace without being told and they were moving back toward the city boundary at a speed that was less running and more the controlled fast walk of people who know that running burns out faster than sustained movement.Twelve kilometres. Forty minutes minimum.Too long."Miller," Ethan sa

She came in at six in the evening on day three, in a pickup truck that had seen better years and was running on what smelled like cooking oil and determination.Ethan was in the lobby when Thorne opened the front door and said, simply, "Someone's here."He went outside.The truck had stopped at the base of the tower and the woman who got out was not what the description had prepared him for — not because Tariq's account had been wrong, but because descriptions of people rarely account for presence. Zara was mid-thirties, Nigerian, with close-cropped natural hair and the particular quality of someone who had been moving through a difficult situation for a long time and had made their peace with difficult being the baseline. She was wearing practical clothes and carrying a single bag and she looked at Ethan across the distance between them the way someone looks at a person they've been studying through a window for a year and are finally meeting face to face."Administrator," she said.

David was crouched behind a parked car across the street when Ethan arrived, which was standard David — already positioned, already reading the building, already two steps ahead of whatever instruction was coming."Two people inside," David said, without looking away from the building. "I could see movement through the ground floor window before the light shifted. One of them sat down about ten minutes ago and hasn't moved since." He paused. "The other one moves like someone who is used to being in spaces they're not supposed to be in."Ethan looked at the building. Three stories, narrow frontage, the kind of commercial property that had probably been a small office before the System activated. The ground floor window had a light — not a lamp, something more portable, a torch or a camping lantern, positioned on a table or a counter.He read the building from across the street.[Source Code View: active.][Target: commercial building — North District, 3 blocks east of tower.][Scanning