The pure note Kaelen broadcast lasted for exactly seven minutes and seventeen seconds before the city's emergency protocols overrode the Spire's compromised systems. Silence returned, but it was different. It was no longer the oppressive quiet of the leash being broken, but a tense, waiting stillness, like the air before a storm.
In a makeshift safehouse—a dusty archive deep in the city's core, provided by Mama Zero—the trio licked their wounds. Jax slept fitfully, his body still wrestling with the ghost of the beast. Anya cleaned her rifle, the methodical clicks a counter-rhythm to the distant, unfamiliar sounds of a city without its master frequency.
"It's already starting," Kaelen said, his eyes glued to a bank of scavenged monitors. He was tuned into the public comms channels. "Looting in the OmniCorp commercial sectors. Fires in the Derelicts. The Enforcer channels are a mess—half are following the remaining chain of command, the other half have gone rogue."
"It's chaos," Anya stated, not looking up from her work. "But it's free chaos. It's better than being a controlled asset."
"Is it?" Kaelen countered, pulling up a map. Red dots flared where violence was erupting. "Without the Grid, the latent aggression in the city is spiking. It's like… withdrawal. And listen to this." He played a clip from a fringe channel. A new voice, fiery and charismatic, was preaching. "The corporations built a cage of sound! Now God has given us silence! It is a holy void, to be filled with our faith, our purity! Cleanse the streets of the non-believers!"
"A cult," Anya said, her lip curling. "Of course. Vultures on the carcass of order."
"It's not just them," Kaelen added, switching channels. "I'm picking up encrypted corporate traffic. Not OmniCorp. Others. Kronos Industries, Aethel-Arms. They're calling it 'a unique market opportunity.' They're positioning their private security to fill the power vacuum."
The problem was no longer singular. It was a hydra. Anarchy, religious fanaticism, and corporate predation, all blooming in the fertile silence.
Jax stirred on his cot, his eyes opening. They were clear, but held a deep, weary knowledge. "The pack feels it too," he rasped. "The anger in the city. It's like a scent on the wind. It… tempts the other half. The beast doesn't need the Alpha Frequency to be angry. It just needs a reason."
He sat up, his movements still carrying a predator's latent grace. "We can't just broadcast a pretty note and hope for the best, Kaelen. You can't conduct a symphony when the orchestra is on fire. We need to find the others like me. The ones who are lost. Before they become the monsters this new chaos wants them to be. Or before the new wolves—the cults and the corps—hunt them down."
Anya finally looked up, meeting her brother's gaze. "Then that's where we start. We find the pack. We offer them a choice. A new kind of pack."
Kaelen looked from the soldier to the beast-turned-man, then back to the map of his fracturing city. The composer in him was terrified. But the man, the one who had heard a ghost in the code and chosen to act, knew they were right. The next movement wouldn't be composed of a single, pure note. It would be a dissonant, dangerous hunt through the storm they had unleashed.