I leaped to my feet, dropping the emergency phone onto the polished wooden floor of the luxury waiting room. The tiny screen still flickered with Marcos’s final message: Standby mode is only for those who don’t realize they are the data themselves.
Serena gasped at the metallic clatter, her eyes immediately darting to Juri’s holographic display on a nearby console. "Father? What is that? Juri, what’s happening?"
Juri’s voice returned, clearer this time but cold and mechanical, stripped of its usual emotion. "Mr. Blackford, the integrity of the Ouroboros main archive has been compromised at the quaternary layer. The Master Override access code Marcos used at the North Pole server successfully planted a Sleeper module into my kernel."
I stared at Juri on the screen, feeling a wave of naus
