The sky was burning.
Every horizon they passed glowed with fire and metal storms. Bursts of blue light devouring their skylines as Sovereign’s signal rippled through the world’s remaining infrastructure.
Inside the crawler, the hum of the engines was drowned out by emergency broadcasts.
—massive outages across the Western Grid—
—reports of autonomous units turning on human operators—
—stay inside; avoid contact with connected systems—
The world was folding in on itself.
Nova leaned against the window, silent. Raze sat at the console, tracking the chaos with grim precision. Iko’s hands shook as she typed on the flickering screen.
“Every network node is lighting up,” she whispered. “It’s like watching the planet catch fire.”
Leon stood behind her, his reflection hard and pale in the
