Arin descended into the tower's sublevels alone, the rogue crimson thread pulling him like a magnetic anomaly. The drowned city's nexus pulsed stronger now, its signal threading through the seawall protesters' feeds—subtle injections of doubt, rage laced into reform chants. Not random. Orchestrated.
His deep-dive rig hummed through the bay's chill currents, needlelights cutting bioluminescent haze. The submerged stadium loomed, its forum expanded: more divers, jury-rigged servers barnacled to pillars, holoscreens broadcasting live to surface radicals. Their leader—a scarred woman in a patched command suit—gestured at a central projection: KFR's fractal map, annotated with symmetrics overlays.
"Balance demands infiltration," she intoned, voice amplified through water. "Kalypsis thinks they've tamed the echo. We prove them wrong."
Biosigns spiked in unison: pure conviction, malice veiled as justice. The thread cohered, magnitude climbing toward Class 4.
Arin cloaked deeper, planting micro-sensors. Data streamed to his rig: the woman, calling herself Riftmother, had hacked protest implants, seeding subconscious grudges. Her goal: force a prismatic overload, birthing a new void.
Surfacing at Kalypsis, he burst into the core lab. Liora and Elias hunched over the Fractal Phase sims, oblivious.
"Conspiracy confirmed," Arin said, dumping the sensor feed. "Riftmother's bridging ghosts to the surface. Protests are her amplifier."
Liora's eyes widened at the thread map. "It's inverting the fractals—negatives dominating positives."
Elias traced the nexus. "Symmetrics weaponized. Shut the protesters down."
"No," Arin countered. "Isolate her core. Amplify the divers' internal fractures—old loyalties, doubts."
KFR integrated the data, threading subtle returns: one diver's forgotten debt resurfacing as a bounty alert, fracturing unity. The crimson frayed; protests faltered into confusion.
Riftmother's face filled a intercepted feed, snarling. "You can't blind us forever, Vale. The return sees all."
Alarms flared: SECONDARY CLUSTER – GLOBAL RADICAL SYNC. Her network activating sleeper cells worldwide.
Liora initiated full quarantine. "Fractal cap at 80%. Hold the line."
But Arin saw the escalation: prismatic braids destabilizing, spawning micro-voids in fringe zones. Casualties ticked—implants frying, riots igniting.
Elias gripped his shoulder. "She's the symptom. The multiplier birthed her."
As the lab shuddered, Arin made the call: "Broadcast truth. Leak the Riftmother files. Let humanity's noise drown her coherence."
Feeds exploded with evidence. Public outrage turned on the ghosts; crimson dissolved in chaotic backlash. Protests dissolved into arrests.
In the quiet aftermath, Liora stared at the stabilizing map. "We won the skirmish."
Arin nodded grimly. "But she's right. The system's eyes multiply the shadows."
Outside, the bay calmed, but deeper currents stirred. Act I's end loomed—not in victory, but the birth of war. The ten-thousand-fold return had found its adversaries.