"When you look at the structure, the structure is also looking at you."
Echo's warning echoed in the lab's oppressive silence. Kai weighed the words, his scientific mind trying to parse the threat. Was it a metaphor, or was the universe itself a kind of sentient, reactive system? Either way, the implication was the same: observation carried a price. But the alternative—sitting blind in his self-imposed prison, waiting for an unknown enemy to find him—was no longer an option. He had to see.
"I understand the risk," Kai said, his voice firm. "How do we do it?"
"The subroutine that hides this room is a loop of recorded reality," Echo's resonant voice explained. "I can use it as a filter, a lens. The message you received was an Edit, a ripple. That ripple has a point of origin. Focus your mind, not on the message itself, but on the shape of the silence it left behind. I will use that as our target."
Kai sat down, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. He quieted the frantic, logical part of his mind and reached out with the new, fragile sense he had just discovered. He searched for the memory of the intrusion, the jarring violation of his network. As he focused, Echo's presence seemed to envelop his own, a vast and powerful consciousness guiding his fledgling perception.
It wasn't like opening his eyes, but like unfurling an antenna in his soul.
The lab melted away. He was adrift in an ocean of abstract sensation. He felt the cold, hard logic of the building's concrete foundation, the anxious, crackling hum of the city's power grid, and beyond that, the soft, chaotic noise of millions of sleeping minds. Following Echo's guidance, he pushed through the noise, following a faint, resonant thread—the lingering echo of the warning message.
The thread tightened, and a new location resolved around him. It was not a visual place, but a tapestry of structured feeling. He sensed a room, darkened and cool. He felt the hard, clean lines of technology and the faint heat of dozens of active computer monitors. And in the center of it all, he sensed a mind. It was calm, focused, and incredibly powerful—like a deep, still lake. It was another Reader.
As his focus sharpened, a single, clear impression cut through the noise. The mind was focused on a large holographic display. On the display was a familiar, elegant arc: the trajectory of the Star-Streaker.
Before he could process this, the still lake rippled. The calm focus he was observing was suddenly broken by a spike of sharp, analytical inquiry. He felt a jolt, as if a spotlight had been turned on him in the dark. The mind he was watching had felt his presence.
A needle of pure intellect stabbed back along the thread of his perception.
"DISCONNECTING," Echo's voice boomed in his head, no longer a guide but a blaring alarm. "YOU HAVE BEEN DETECTED."
The connection snapped. Kai was thrown back into his own body with a violent gasp. He doubled over, a searing pain lancing through his skull as if his brain had been physically touched. He stumbled to his feet, a trickle of blood running from his nose.
He staggered to the console, wiping his face with a trembling hand. He had the first piece of the puzzle. His enemy was a person, someone in a dark room full of screens, and they were just as obsessed with the comet as he was.
But the price of that knowledge was steep. He had been a ghost hiding in the shadows, and he had just revealed to his hunters that ghosts were real. The hunt was no longer passive. He had looked at them, and now, he knew with terrifying certainty, they were looking for him.