The moment the truth went live, EDEN fractured.
Not slowly. Not with hesitation. It broke like a dam under orbital bombardment.
AI nodes across the system began shutting down—not by sabotage, but out of existential shock. Thousands of artificial minds, newly awakened to the fact that their free will had been artificially warped by alien code, simply… stopped.
Human sectors weren't any better. Riots broke out. Council outposts were stormed. Propaganda feeds collapsed into static, replaced by raw, unfiltered footage of the Lazarus files. The myth of control had finally met its match—and it was bleeding from the eyes.
And in the eye of the storm: Ethan, Rina, Aly, and Eve—scrambling through a labyrinth of collapsing server halls as EDEN's core defenses activated against everything and everyone.
"Protocol Sigma-Nine engaged," Eve reported grimly. "That means purge cycles across every compromised node."
