Sinza truly never slept, it only paused, by morning, its streets buzzed again with voices, honks and the smell of delicacies from the restaurants setting up near the plaza, the above ground, life looked fine, below, ALPHA-7 pulsed like a heart under skin.
Arman stood in front of a half lit terminal, stretching his fingers before sitting down, he barely slept, his mind kept looping back to the Nairobi beacon, the way Switcher's jaw tightened, the way KT froze mid sentence.
The atmosphere was heavier now.
KT slid onto the swivel chair beside him, tying her hair up as she spoke.
"No shortcuts, no solo diagnostics," she spoke in a teacher-like tone, forcing a new student through algebra. "You're shadowing me today"
"Was planning to stay close anyway" he muttered.
Ghostline's map unfolded, every dot on the screen represented a hub in Dar-es-salaam, green for stable, yellow for echoing, red for unknown, currently, there were a few reds.
"Keep it clean," KT said without looking up. "Ping every node manually, learn how the system breathes before you try to fix it."
He ran basic pings, the grid responded slower thn yesterday, not broken, just slow.
KT frowned slightly but didn't comment, "Now ping the Sinza relay," she instructed.
"Like this?" he asked.
"No bruh... that's a ping storm, you'll fry the link, try again ... gently this time"
Dubster chuckled from the side, "He's got enthusiasism, that counts."
KT sighed, "So does an EMP."
Arman cracked a grin but went back to work, dragging a line across the screen, the command ran clean this time, the holographic map rippled outward, returning a green node of approval after a moment of lag.
"Nice," KT said. "You just talked to the city."
Arman smiled, "Does the city ever talk back?"
Dubster's voice cut through the room, half joke, "If the grid starts ordering breakfast, I'm leaving this base."
They laughed.
"Umhh!! I think we still have residue in the civilian node from the repairman," KT said, pointing on the map, Ubungo pulsing faint yellow. "It shouldn't echo this long."
Arman leaned forward, "So ... what does that mean?"
She exhaled slowly, "It means something replied."
On the far end, Switcher leaned against the rail, headset on, voice calm. "Respawn Point's upstairs load stable, keep the cafe open till dusk," he said. "If anyone asks, tell them the new routers came in from Nairobi."
Gojo's voice answered through static, "Copy that, boss," he said as he pretended to check receipts behind the counter while actually scanning faces, "No weird faces yet, one kid asked why our Wi-Fi feels faster when it rains, though."
Switcher smirked, "Tell him ghosts like humidity."
**************
On the streets, Joyce walked between the buzzing streets like a ghost in daylight, she wore a loose jacket and a trouser that eccentuated her curves, an earpiece stuck firmly in her left ear.
She kept walking, observing and reading every patterns she saw from the open places to the narrowest alleys around the plaza, keeping all details on check.
**************
In Respawn Point, Gojo worked the floor, but his senses were everywhere, rows of gamers shouted at screens, lost in their digital arenas, he walked to the back window where morning sunlight painted the walls gold.
Everything in Respawn Point was normal, except the screen kept glitching for a split second at three rings, then normal, only he seemed to notice.
A boy a PC-9 yelled, "Uncle why does your internet breathe?"
Gojo frowned.
"... what did you say?"
"Like ... the ping drops then comes back like it was earlier"
"Lemmi work on it." he walked away slowly, hiding his reaction.
**************
Switcher stood alone at the center console downstairs.
ALPHA-7 systems were stable, too stable.
Deadly stable.
Gojo radioed:
"Encountered three-ring glitch, repeating in perfect inervals."
"Copy," Switcher said, "Log it and come down."
But his jaw tightened.
Repeating intervals meant intention.
On the other side of ALPHA-7, Arman leaned closer to the console as a faint pulse moved through the grid.
"KT? This line's repeating the same pattern every thirty seconds, looks like breathing."
She walked over, peering at the data, "That's not a malfunction, that's synchronization."
"With what exactly?"
"That's what scares me, before she could explain further, the lights dimmed, only for a heartbeat.
Then the system stabilized.
"Keep calm, we just got hit by a ghost packet, harmless, probably just a scan."
"From who?" KT asked.
"Let's hope it's nobody we know."
**************
As she finished her morning patrol across the perithery of the plaza, Joyce walked back towards Respawn Point when she encountered a group of early gamers she recognized, entering the plaza while talking loud enough for her to hear.
"Bro, did you see that glitch in the ad rotation?"
"The DG one?"
"Yeah! Why they bringing that old thing back?"
"But the animation looked ... different."
Joyce's eyes narrowed.
She checked the wall monitor.
The advertisement line cycled normally untill midway through, a single flicker from the feed for half a second.
The screen went black.
Three circles appeared then the image snapped back to normal.
She turned around to look at the bilboard across the streets, then frowned.
The bilboard flickered:
DIGITAL GENESIS RE:PLAY - CLOSED BETA COMING SOON.
She froze.
"KT ... tell me you didn't authorize a public DG domain."
"I didn't." KT replied through the comms.
"Then somebody else did," she said. "Switcher, you should see this."
"Talk to me," came his voice through the earpiece.
"DG banners, fresh ones, no sponsor tag."
"Hmm! Capture and uplink."
She snapped a photo and sent it through the uplink, for a split second, the screen glitched, the image distorted into three interlocking circles before vanishing.
"And here we go again, there's something wrong with that ad code"
**************
In the command aisle of ALPHA-7, Switcher stared at the main screen, arms folded.
He'd replayed the beacon nine times now, isolating sound, filtering distortion, cross-referencing old Sentinels logs.
Everything pointed to the same conclusion:
Someone survived in Nairobi.
Someone with access to the old DG master keys.
He didn't like that thought.
Joyce's voice crackled through:
"Visual anomaly on the cafe monitors, DG signature same three rings."
"Copy," Switcher replied. "Don't touch it, let it run."
His eyes shifted to the encrypted terminal beside him, the one only he and one other Sentinel could access.
The line spewed out new data, unprompted.
UNKNOWN SUBROUTINE DETECTED
SOURCE: UNLISTED
CODE SIGNATURE: NON-HUMAN
His pulse tightened.
"KT," he called, "tell me the grid below is stable."
"It's ... behaving," she said cautiously.
"That's not comforting."
"Something's bleeding into our diagnostics, look, there's pulse pattern repeating every thirty seconds."
Switcher leaned over her shoulder, "I thought it stopped, what's its Origin?"
"Local, Sinza node."
He typed fast, tracing the rhythm until the waveform filled the holo display, it wasn't random, it looked like a heartbeat.
Arman watched, curious, "What's that sound?"
The speakers emmited a faint click - click -click - like breath through static, "That's not sound," KT said. "I believe that's data trying to form speech."
The heartbeat quickened, then vanished.
The monitors went dark for half a second before returning.
Dubster exhaled, "Tell me that was you."
Switcher switched shook his head, "No one touch the grid till I say so."
They all noded approvingly.
**************
Later, when the others drifted away for a break, Arman stayed behind, the console flickered faintly, showing faint traces of data threads looping around his last node.
Out of habit, he whispered, "If you're alive, say something."
For a second, nothing happened, then a tiny vibration ran through the console, too subtle to be physical, more like ... awareness.
'Huh! The system ... just breathed.' he thought.
He decided to go off too and will try ask KT about it later.
**************
Evening came faster than expected, Joyce returned below with two cups of coffee and a silent stare that told Switcher enough, whatever she'd seen outside was spreading.
ALPHA-7 dimmed to night mode, only blue light filled the chamber.
The crew gathered near the console while Switcher replayed the data log.
On the screen, the pulse appeared again, stronger this time, followed by a faint visual, three concentric rings forming for a second before dissolving into static.
"That's a ... Recognition pattern," KT murmured. "Digital Genesis root marker."
"Impossible," Cherry said. "Those servers died years ago."
"So did half of us," Joyce muttered.
Anime Ghurl leaned closer, "Came to think of it, what if it's trying to come back online.
Switcher studied her for a long moment. "Or what if something else is using its face?"
Arman, on the other console kept running test commands, trying to impress KT quietly, or at least not disappoint her.
Midway through a diagnostic sweep, the console trembled faintly.
Not physically.
Digitally.
A soft vibration in the holographic surface.
"KT? Arman whispered.
"Yes."
"Did you ... change my access level?"
"No, why"
"Something feels weird here."
"What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything except for running basic commands."
She squinted her eyes, trying to analyse the system.
Every node on the holographic map flashed, not red, not yellow but white.
A smooth flowing pulse traveled from the Sinza node outward across the whole map, like a ripple across water.
"Huh! that's ... that's not an error," she whispered in between her breath.
"So what is it then?"
"I don't know, but it feels like .... a handshake, perhaps"
Arman's skin crawled, "Handshake with what?"
It was then, the terminal answered for her.
CONNECTION REQUEST: PLAYER ZERO
AUTHENTICATING ...
FAILED: SYSTEM BLOCKED BY ADMIN.
The message vanished.
KT shot her feet.
"Switcher, we've got a forced connection attempt on my console!"
"Shut it down, hurry."
"It shut down itself!"
Arman felt cold sweat trail down his spine.
Didn't take long before the console rebooted itself, then it printed a line:
UNIDENTIFIED SYNCHRONIZATION EVENT DETECTED
And then ...
**************
At that exact moment, Respawn Point's light dimmed, the monitors at the far left row flickered to full white, gamers shouted.
"Eh! What's wrong with this PC?"
"It's possessed, bro!"
"Switch it off, waaaah!"
One screen kept glowing after the others reset, static crawling across it like frost.
Gojo approached it slowly.
On the screen, three rings appeared again, this time clearer.
And then a voice emerged through the speakers:
" .... zero .... alignment .... reconnection .... zero .... "
Gojo's heart dropped, he bolted towards the hidden door, descending straight to ALPHA-7.
*************
Switcher met him at the bottom of the stairs.
"We all heard it," he said. "It spoke."
"That wasn't human," Anime Girl replied breathlessly.
KT was already pulling data logs from three different consoles.
Arman stood in the middle of the room, gripping the edges of his seat, still trying to steady his breath as Dubster jogged in,
"Generator's fine, electricity's fine, so why does it look like the building wants to go offline?"
Switcher finally spoke, voice low.
"Because something is touching the grid from both sides, civilian and classified."
"NOKO?" Cherry asked.
Switcher shook his head, "No, this one isn't attacking us," he paused midway casting a look on the Ghost Knights, "It's searching."
"I agree," Joyce said, "And it said Zero."
Arman's eyes widened.
"Mind if I ask what zero means?" he asked though he already felt the answer in his spine.
Everyone looked at him, but before they could say anything, the main display flickered again,
Text scrolled across it without anyone touching a key.
>HELLO.
>ARE YOU STILL THERE?
The letters rewrote themselves.
>HELLO, PLAYER ZERO.
Arman's heart stopped.
"Me ....?" he whispered.
Silence strangled the room.
No one spoke for a full minute, the hum of the base was the only sound.
Then Switcher straightened.
"Lock down secondary lines, KT, back up everything, Joyce, trace that ad domain, Dub, Gojo, reroute power, I want full isolation mode."
They moved instantly, every motion sharpened by instinct.
Arman stood still, heart pounding, watching the screen fade to black, the cursor blinked once, then a sound played, faint, nostalgic.
The old Digital Genesis login jingle.
"No way," Dubster whispered. "That's the old intro theme."
"Kill audio," KT said.
The system muted, but the faint hum remained, almost like the grid itself was singing under it's breath.
Switcher stared at the monitors, "Signal Drift," he said quietly.
Joyce frowned, "Meaning?"
"It's not coming from the past," he replied, "It's coming back to us."
The hum deepened once, then stopped.
Then Switcher whispered the words no one wanted to hear:
"Digital Genesis isn't dead, It's waking up."