Geneva – 2:17 AM

Camellia’s screens exploded with red pings.

She jolted awake on the lab couch, nearly knocking over the tablet on her chest. Mira was already shouting from the adjacent node room.

“Three validator clusters just dropped off consensus!”

Camellia sprinted to the core terminal. Streams of white code blinked faster than she could track.

A new node signature was replicating inside LUX. Not breaking it.

Becoming it.

She activated a freeze but the breach had already multiplied across 71 regions.

ASHWIRE was no longer testing the system.

It had started infecting it.

A global news channel abruptly cut into its midnight segment with a jarring new headline:...