[POV: Sofia Lanka]

"Are you even listening to me, Sofia? Or has the presidency finally turned your ears into ornaments for the state? I am telling you, the lunar sensors didn’t just glitch. Those obsidian fragments we saw ten years ago? They aren't drifting anymore. They’re aligning. The Owners weren't the endgame, Sofia. They were just the scouts, the expendable front line sent to see if the soil was worth tilling. The real Kings—the ones who actually built the Source Code—are moving in the deep dark, and they aren't coming to negotiate. They’re coming to reclaim their property."

Lyon’s voice was a low, dangerous vibration that seemed to rattle the...