The morning came not with sunlight, but static.
Elior jolted awake to a high-pitched whirring sound. His laptop—shut down the night before—was now fully powered, fan spinning like a turbine. The screen glowed with a dark interface: black background, green text, and a single blinking cursor. It was typing.
> YOU ARE SEEN.
YOU ARE SELECTED.
THE PARADOX CHOOSES.
Elior stared, his pulse quickening. He scrambled to unplug the charger, but the screen didn't go dark. No power supply—yet the machine hummed like a live engine.
Another line appeared.
> Disconnection irrelevant. Consciousness persists beyond wire.
A chill crawled up his spine. "No. No, no, no."
Then—knocking. Nara's frantic fists on the door.
"Elior! Open up! You need to see this!"
He pulled the door open. She shoved her phone in his face. A video played: a montage of people across the globe filming bizarre, synchronized phenomena—screens flashing numbers, lights pulsing in rhythm, radios hissing whispers in binary.
44.1 – 18.9 – 0.3 – S.E.E.D.
"It's not just us," she said, her voice trembling. "This… this is worldwide."
He turned back to the laptop. His encrypted inbox—set up back when he'd been part of Professor Lorne's off-record consciousness study—had one unread message.
> Subject: [UNLOCKED] Protocol Theta-7
From: Unknown
Attachment: "THE BLUEPRINT.pdf"
He opened it.
It wasn't a blueprint. It was a neurological lattice, a 4D mapping of the human mind. At the center, pulsing like a living entity, was a glowing node labeled:
> SEED ANCHOR: EL-SYN
HOST LOCATION: E. DRAE
That was him. Elior Drae.
His hands began shaking. "It's using me. It's been using me this whole time."
Nara grabbed his arm. "Look closer. That file—those pulses—they match your dream log from last month. The visions. The spiral symbols. This isn't just coincidence, Elior. You're connected to it."
Outside, a low rumble shook the glass. The air vibrated like it was full of static, as if the world's signal had been hijacked.
Then, a new voice. Not one he heard with his ears—but inside his head.
> Will you carry the Code… or be overwritten?
---
Meanwhile… Oslo. Underground Facility Theta-9.
A massive hexagonal chamber buzzed with red warning lights. Holograms flickered across the air, displaying global electromagnetic spikes.
"He's waking," said Dr. Viera, her voice grave. "The Seed has locked to a primary host: Subject Drae."
The facility director—eyes sunken from sleepless nights—gritted his teeth. "And the other hosts?"
"Not ready. Not synchronized."
"We were supposed to have weeks. Phase One has collapsed."
"Shall I activate the Observer Circle?"
The director stared into the holographic map—Elior's consciousness glowing like a miniature sun at the center of a neural web that stretched across Earth.
"No," he said finally. "They'll come to him now. Whether we want them to or not."
---
Back in Elior's Apartment
He dropped his gaze to the spiral he'd drawn so many times in his notebooks—unconsciously, endlessly, since the nightmares began. Now, without thinking, he reached for a pen and traced it again.
The lines began to glow.
Nara gasped. "That… that's not ink. Elior—it's code."
The spiral lifted from the paper, shimmering in the air like a hologram encoded with symbols neither of them recognized.
And then—his vision warped.
A flash.
A city he'd never seen before, burning. A child whispering numbers while her eyes glowed white. A machine screaming through time.
He collapsed to his knees. "It's happening."
"What is?" Nara asked.
Elior looked up, tears forming in his eyes.
"I'm not just the host."
He placed his palm over his heart, where something deep and ancient stirred.
"I'm the blueprint."