The stillness was wrong.
Seoul's skyline had never been this quiet, not even during the blackouts of the previous crises. Now the entire city glowed under a pale dawn haze, every light flickering in perfect unison like the synchronized pulse of a machine heartbeat.
No honking cars. No shouting crowds. No sirens.
Just silence — vast, heavy, and artificial.
Keller's boots hit the rooftop edge as he scanned the streets below. "No movement for five hours," he said, voice clipped. "That's not quiet — that's control."
Lin adjusted the frequency scanner slung across his chest. The device emitted a faint hum, pulsing at 3.7 hertz — the same rhythm that had spread through the world's networks. "Every transmission's aligning to a central wave. The Archive's inside everything now — phones, drones, even traffic lights."
"And the people?" Keller asked.
