POV: Zane

The first sign is not an explosion. It is a gap.

I am in the operations room reviewing the overnight border logs when the eastern sensor string drops offline for three full seconds and then comes back as if nothing happened. Three seconds is long enough to walk through a blind zone if you already know where it is. Long enough to place something. Long enough to test whether anyone is watching closely enough to notice.

I sit forward. “Run the eastern string again. Full diagnostic.”

The technician on duty moves immediately. The diagnostic comes back clean. The sensors are reporting normal. The three-second gap is already a...