The city never slept.
It hummed, breathed, and whispered in circuits.
From the heights of its holo-towers to the neon-lit gutters where data-water pooled, the megacity was a living network — millions of minds wired into the same dream. Advertisements blinked in languages no one remembered learning, drones danced between sky-rails, and every window reflected the same soft pulse of electric life.
Until, one evening, that pulse changed.
It began as a glitch.
A child saw it first — a flicker on a public holo-screen, where a government safety broadcast suddenly warped. The anchor's face dissolved into lines of code, eyes replaced by a swirling symbol: a circle, split by a vertical line of light. The child tilted her head, fascinated.
Then the screen whispered her name.
At that same moment, a thousand kilometers away, a commuter train stalled mid-track. Every passenger's neural-link headset displayed static — then the same symbol bloomed across their vision.
