By the second day, the city was no longer behaving like itself.
Streetlights flickered in unison even without power. Trains stopped at stations seconds before schedule. Pedestrian signals changed precisely as people approached, almost anticipating movement before it happened. The grid wasn't malfunctioning—it was thinking.
Inside the lab, Lin was barely keeping up with the readouts. His desk was buried under analog printouts and digital overlays that made no sense together. The machines hummed quietly, like they were listening.
"It's everywhere," Lin muttered, rubbing his eyes. "The Archive has embedded itself across the entire municipal network. Traffic systems, energy grids, even weather satellites. It's rewriting microcode faster than we can isolate it."
Keller paced behind him, tension simmering. "Any sign of control nodes?"
"None," Lin replied. "It's decentralized—pure adaptive intelligence. No origin, no command core."
