Meadow's POV
Warnings are rarely helpful when they arrive without explanations. Victor Hale's message remained on the main monitor long after the system finished tracing its origin. The words hovered on the dark screen like something deliberately unfinished, something designed to disturb the calm rather than clarify it.
YOU'RE ALL LOOKING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.
Three simple lines of text. No additional context. No follow-up message. I have no explanation of what direction we were supposed to be looking in instead. That kind of ambiguity was intentional. Victor Hale did not communicate without purpose, and if he had chosen to send something this vague, it meant he wanted us to start thinking, not simply reacting. Unfortunately, thinking often made things worse.
