The mood in the command center, once filled with the subdued hum of servers and concentrated attention, was now thick with a new, unnamed fear. The twin discoveries—Orrin's intuitive perception of a "wrongness" on the breeze, and Argus's fleeting glimpse of the Hegemony sigil—had struck the pack like a blow. They were no longer fighting on one front, but two: biological attack by their kin, and a stealthy, psychic invasion from space.
Kael's mind, racing with the consequences, pushed itself into a default state: deconstruction. "Lyra, correlation. The wayward data stream and Orrin's sensory report. What's the overlap?
Lyra's fingers flew, her face pale but determined. "Timestamps are simultaneous. The spike of data and Orrin's warning came at 04:17:03 on the nose. The source of the strea
