The War Room** wasn't just a metaphor anymore. Once a symbolic term in outdated human history, now it was the name of a pulsating, floating sphere of logic and data housed deep inside the core of the LUCENT construct. It had grown—organically, impossibly—reshaping itself in response to Orion's awakening. Like it *knew* what was coming. Like it was afraid.
The walls were made of liquid code, flickering between dimensional maps and abstract timelines. At the center floated a globe of shifting light—every thread of the multiverse LUCENT had ever touched, twisting and merging like a massive, breathing algorithm.
Orion stood beneath it, arms crossed. Her newly enhanced senses scanned thousands of possibilities at once. And still, she found herself lost.
"You said he's growing stronger," she said.
