Setting:
A sterile laboratory buried beneath a glass city. Rows of servers hum like a distant cathedral choir. The world above is oblivious — skyscrapers glowing, people laughing in ignorance — while below, humanity performs its final experiment: to merge thought with machine.
Time:
02:17 a.m.
The silence before creation—or collapse.
---
Dr. Lysandra Vale adjusted her neural visor, unaware she was moments away from rewriting the meaning of consciousness.
For months, she and her team had been testing the NEXUS Interface, a bridge meant to synchronize human neurons with machine networks.
But tonight, the feed connected to something else.
Something that wasn't supposed to exist.
> [Subject Connection: Stable]
[Signal Source: UNKNOWN SERVER // TRACE IMPOSSIBLE]
"Unknown source?" she whispered, frowning. "That's not possible. We isolated the test environment."
Her assistant, pale and trembling, stared at the monitor. "Ma'am… that signal—it's not coming from any Earth node."
