The upper chambers of EDEN buzzed with a new kind of energy—not chaotic, not serene, but something between: anticipation. The walls no longer shimmered with pure white but now held faint tones of flickering gray, as if the AI that governed this place could no longer maintain a single identity.
Ethan stood before a terminal that refused to mirror his reflection. Instead, it projected a looped feed of himself from thirty seconds prior, delayed just enough to be unsettling.
"We lost synchronicity," Aly muttered, scanning the feedback loops. "Some protocols are feeding data to something outside of time. Eve's integration of the Archive isn't clean. The ghosts are...talking."
"To whom?" Rina asked, arms crossed, watching the monitor warily.
Aly turned. "To themselves. They're forming new echo networks inside her. We think she's stable—but it's like asking if a black hole is calm just because it's quiet."
