"Asher," I say softly. "Can you hear it?"
Asher opens his eyes. The silver eye is swirling with complex, non-Euclidean shapes. "Yes, Mama. It’s loud. But it’s not angry. It’s... sad. It’s repeating the same phrase over and over."
"Can you translate it?" Kade asks, his physical voice a deep, gravelly rasp.
"I can feel the math," Asher says, his voice tight with the physical exertion of holding the connection. "It’s a base-12 algorithm. It’s Architect syntax. But it’s degraded. It’s old. It’s been repeating for a long time."
"Put it on the main screen," I command. "Let’s see the math."
Morgan taps a final key. The holographic projection shifts, displaying a cascading waterfall of glowing, violet fractal code. It is beautiful, terrifying, and entirely alien.
"Run it through the linguist
