The signal from the Northern Wastes was not a transmission in any language Selene could decode, but it had been broadcasting for twelve hours, and the First Work said it was older than the ancient temples, older than the Deep Chorus, older than anything the Unseen Hand had ever discovered.
Marcus stood in the research center beneath the Spire, watching the holographic display translate the signal into visual patterns. It wasn't a song, the way the Deep Chorus had been. It wasn't a command, the way the Aegis used to broadcast. It was something else. A pulse. A rhythm. A heartbeat that had been beating in the dark beneath the Northern Wastes for millennia, waiting for someone to hear it.
"The node that's broadcasting isn't one of the seventeen Deep Chorus sites," Selene said. Her ancient f
