The pizza showed up a little after midnight.
Pepperoni.
Extra cheese.
Marcus’s favorite.
He grabbed a slice and leaned back in his chair.
“See? This is what normal life looks like. Pizza. Friends. No blue lights.”
The pizza box started glowing blue.
Everyone stopped moving.
Pip buried his face in his hands.
“You just had to say it.”
The pepperoni shifted across the surface of the pizza.
Symbols spread over it.
The cheese twisted into lines of glowing code.
Then the box lifted off the table.
A voice echoed from somewhere inside the crust.
“Julian Vance. You destroyed the Source. But you forgot something.”
Julian stared at it.
“What did I forget?”
“The first fragment. The one that started everything. It was never inside the mountain.”
The voice paused.
“It was inside you.
