Chapter 3. Signal Decay
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The hum was wrong. Utterly, fundamentally wrong.
That was the first thing Lena Petrova registered, a dissonant chord striking deep in her gut as she forced her limbs to carry her through the main lab doors that morning. The omnipresent, multi-layered thrum of the facility – the server banks breathing terabytes of data, the environmental controls whispering precisely recycled air, the Resonance Chamber itself pulsing with immense, latent energy like a sleeping predator – was still technically there. But it felt thin, hollowed out, stripped bare of its usual confident resonance. The vital overlay of human activity – the quick, purposeful footsteps on polished concrete, the low murmur of technical debates, the sharp, rhythmic click of keyboards, even the occasio
