The medic and tech teams hurried the broken constructs into the lower analysis bay, but the room still felt too quiet. Too cold. The kind of quiet where fear had settled into the walls and waited for the next breath to break.
I stood over the table with one of the shattered cores sitting under a scanner. Its faint blue glow pulsed in flickering intervals, slower each minute. Even dying, it looked alive.
Sophie adjusted the panel. “This is not Program tech. Not fully. The internal structure is older than anything they built.”
My pulse spiked. The words older caught hard on my ribs.
Jack felt my reaction before I could even take a breath. He stepped closer, brushing his fingers along my arm. “Lainey. Look at me.”
But I could not. The walls seemed to tilt. My vision doubled for a moment.
