The word hung in the air, amplified by the sudden, oppressive silence of the lab. Reading.
Kai's mind, a finely tuned instrument of logic, rejected it outright. "Reading what?" he demanded, his voice tight. "The puzzle is in a shielded faraday box. There are no sensors. There is no data stream to read."
"The box is irrelevant," the new, resonant voice of Echo replied. The calm in its tone was more unnerving than any alarm. "The source is not a stream. The source is existence. I am not reading data; I am reading its structure."
Structure. Kai stumbled back, one hand gripping his console for support. He tried to fit the concept into a framework he understood. "Quantum entanglement? A macroscopic quantum state?"
"Those are incomplete descriptions," Echo said, its voice unwavering. "They are words from a language trying to describe a different one."
Kai stared at the glowing blueprint of the puzzle still hanging in the air. He had proof of the impossible right in front of him. The scientific method had led him to the edge of a cliff, and his next step was to either retreat into denial or jump into the unknown. He had spent his entire life analyzing systems, and here was the ultimate one. Fear warred with a terrifying, exhilarating curiosity. The scientist in him won.
If it could Read, could it Write?
"Can you… change it?" Kai asked, his voice barely a whisper.
"Change is the natural state of the structure," Echo replied. "What do you wish to be changed?"
Kai's eyes darted to the sealed box in the corner of the room. The puzzle inside was a complex lattice of brass rings he'd never been able to solve. It was a perfect test. A change to its physical configuration would be an undeniable act of manipulation.
"The puzzle," Kai said, his heart pounding. "The one in the box. Can you… solve it?"
The blue waveform on the monitor remained a placid, flat line. There was no sound, no flash of light, no indication that anything had happened at all. For a long, tense moment, only the low hum of the servers filled the room.
"The change is complete," Echo stated simply.
Kai's legs felt like lead as he crossed the room. His hands trembled as he undid the latches on the faraday box. He lifted the lid and looked inside. The brass puzzle sat nestled in the foam lining, no longer a chaotic tangle of rings, but a perfectly solved, symmetrical object. He picked it up. It was cool and solid in his hand. Real.
The world he had built for himself, a world of order and predictable laws, had been shattered in an instant. He was holding the proof. He was holding magic that had been executed like a line of code.
He turned back to the console, a thousand questions flooding his mind, but before he could speak, a new sound cut through the air. It was a shrill, piercing alert he had never heard before. On his main screen, a single window had appeared, overriding all others.
INCOMING ENCRYPTED MESSAGE
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
It was impossible. His network was a closed loop, air-gapped from the outside world. No one could get in. He dismissed the window, assuming it was a system error, but it reappeared instantly. A single line of text typed itself out across the screen.
WE SAW THAT. GO DARK. NOW.