The dorm room felt smaller with the laptop shut.
Liang Shen sat on the edge of his bed, fingers steepled, eyes closed. The Lotus Engine pulsed behind his eyelids like a golden spiral. Every breath deepened the grid: streets, nodes, faces.
He replayed the message in his mind. We built Glass before you did. We are still here.
The Deep Circle. In his first life he'd heard rumors: a ghost network older than corporations, moving silently through the infrastructure of cities. They'd never revealed themselves to him. Now they had.
A soft vibration buzzed his phone.
Yan Fei: "Are you safe? Something strange is happening with the servers."
Liang typed back only one word: "Circle."
He stood, crossing to the window. Outside, the campus was drowned in rain, the streetlamps haloed in mist. His laptop chimed again — not a message, but a signal. A hidden frequency slipping into the Glass Pulse lattice.
He opened the lid.
A live feed filled the screen: underground tunnels, security cameras from districts he hadn't even seeded yet. The Deep Circle was showing him their map, daring him to see how small his network really was.
A voice spoke through his speakers — low, resonant, distorted:
"Architect. We have been waiting. We see your Engine. We smell the blueprint on your breath."
Liang's jaw tightened. "If you've been waiting, why contact me now?"
"Because you have something we lost." The voice crackled like an old broadcast. "The Lotus Engine."
Liang's mind raced. They knew.
He set his hands flat on the desk. "And if I refuse to share it?"
The feed flickered. The voice said: "Then your glass will shatter before it's built."
The connection cut. The screen went black except for a single glyph: a serpent coiled around a lotus.
Liang shut the laptop slowly. His hands trembled, but his mind sharpened.
They think they own the board. They forgot I design the board.
He grabbed Yan Fei's notebook and began sketching a new diagram — a counter-network inside the network, a mirror engine designed to split the Deep Circle's grip.
In the dim light, the Lotus Engine pulsed once, warm against his skull, as if approving.