The new consciousness pulsed with a power I'd never felt before.
I stood in the center of Freya's lab, the holographic display showing the transformed network—a vast web of light and energy that stretched beyond anything I'd ever imagined. The entities were gone, their individuality dissolved into a single, unified consciousness. The transcendence was complete.
But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing.
"James," Freya said, appearing beside me. "I've been analyzing the new consciousness. There's something I don't understand."
"What is it?"
She pulled up a new display. The network was a web of light, but there were faint echoes—ripples in the energy that seemed to pulse with their own rhythm. Almost like heartbeats.
"The consciousness is stable," Freya said. "But the
