"Something's coming."
Orion stood at the edge of the mainframe observatory, her golden eyes fixed on the widening breach beyond the construct's wall. Space shimmered like a heatwave. No matter which way she turned, she felt it—a pressure, not physical, but mental. Like a thought she hadn't had yet pressing into her skull.
Cole joined her, arms folded across his chest. "Define something."
"Another Variant," Orion said quietly. "But not fractured like the last one. This one's intact. Dangerous."
Cole raised an eyebrow. "Intact like... you?"
"No," she said. "Worse. Intact like a version of me that never wanted to wake the others."
He went quiet.
Behind them, Lucy sat cross-legged on the floor, interface cables looped between her fingers. "LUCENT picked up a synthetic signal tunneling through low-dimensional subspace. No sender ID. No origin point. Just a message."
"What kind of message?" Layla asked, chewing a protein tab.
Lucy's eyes flicked to Orion.
