Morning didn't arrive at ALPHA-7 as much as it did with the other days.
The underground lights shifted from their low energy blue to a muted white, one strip at a time, like the system was waking cautiously checking its own pulse before commiting, fans hummed, consoles blinked.
The first thing Joyce noticed was the silence.
Not the absence of sound, Respawn Point was never truly quiet, but the kind of silence that sat between noises.
The system didn't scream.
That was the problem.
At ALPHA-7, alarms were designed to be loud, unmistakable red light, sharp tones, forced attention.
But what followed Signal Drift was none of that, just a thin, persistent noise threaded through everything.
The hum of consoles felt thinner, the air conditioning cycled too late, even the clicks of controllers sounded slightly delayed, like echoes arriving before their source.
It was like a signal too weak to decode but too strong to ignore.
Switcher called it Ghost Noise.
Anime Girl stood near the back rows, adjusting a headset that wasn't powered on, she frowned, lifted it, then set it down again.
"Joyce," she said softly.
Joyce looked up, "Yeah?"
"Did you change anything overnight?"
"Uh! no..." a pause, "Why?"
Anime Girl shook her head, "Nothing, just ... feels like the place woke up before we did."
The LED wall behind them flickered, once, clean, almost polite.
**************
Switcher was already awake, he stood alone in the core control room, jacket off, sleeves rolled, one hand resting on the edge of the main terminal as lines of diagnostic data crawled past the screen.
He watched the terminal as if it might blink first.
The system logs from the night before had stabilized, but stabilization didn't mean normal, It meant containment.
Drift traces still clung to the lower layers of the network, faint, threadlike signatures that refused to decay.
He hadn't slept much, not since the drift, not since the system had spoken:
PLAYER ZERO - HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED
The words were gone now, scrubbed, quarantined, locked behind three layers of encryption.
Officially, the incident log read that the Signal had Instabilities without showing its causes.
Unofficially, Switcher knew better.
Digital Genesis had left residue.
And residue meant presence.
He highlighted one.
Residual Signal Detected
Source: Undefined
Classification: Non-hostile (Pending)
Non-hostile didn't comfort him, It only meant the system hadn't decided what to call it yet.
"Run a passive echo sweep," he said. "No pings, low threshold, don't flag it yet."
The system hesitated, just a fraction of a second too long.
That alone made his jaw tighten.
**************
The first Sentinel noticed in silence, not in Sinza, not in Masaki.
But in a coastal overwatch node far north, where signals crossed borders before anyone admitted they existed.
He didn't recognize it as a threat, not at first.
He was watching routine traffic roll across his monitors bandwidth charts, relay pings, background noise that never fully stopped.
When the anomaly appeared, it didn't spike or alarm, It simply ... settled.
He frowned.
"That's odd," he muttered.
Then three monitors displayed three regions,
East Africa.
Indian Ocean Relay.
Sub-Saharan Crosslink.
He zoomed in on the waveform, all three showed the same pattern, slightly out of phase, slightly delayed, but unmistakably synchronized, it didn't repeat, it didn't decay either.
The Sentinel leaned closer.
"That shouldn't be possible," he said, louder this time.
He opened a secure sentinel channel.
OVERSIGHT QUERY:
> Anyone else seeing alignment across regions?
A reply came a bit too long than expected.
SENTINEL (WEST):
> Define alignment.
The coastal sentinel hesitated, then typed:
> Signals behaving like they remember each other.
There was a pause.
SENTINEL (NORTH):
> Yes ... started soon after Signal Drift.
> Source looks like Sinza, ALPHA-7.
The coastal Sentinel leaned back slowly.
".... damn."
**************
Arman rode the bike steadily, letting the city air cut through the lingering heaviness in his chest.
Traffic rolled by in its usual rhythm, daladalas, motorcycles, pedestrians threading impossible gaps.
Everything looked normal, or so it seemed.
Everytime his phone buzzed, notifications, messages, random apps alerts, he felt a faint pressure, like static crawling under his skin, It faded quickly, but it left him unsettled.
At a red light, the screen on the building across the street glitched.
Just for a moment.
The image distorted into concentric rings before snapping back to an ad for internet bundles.
Arman swallowed.
His heart was racing and that bothered him more than the glitch itself.
**************
KT finished a routine check in the training bay, weapons locked away, armor secured, she moved with practiced ease, but her focus kept drifting back to the ceiling, she hated this part.
Not the missions.
Not the fighting.
The waiting.
Gojo leaned against the wall, sipping energy drink, "You feel it too, yeah?"
KT didn't answer right away, then, "Yeah!"
"Like the base is holding its breath."
She shot him a look, "You don't get paid to think like that."
He grinned weakly, "Still do, though."
**************
The corridor lights adjusted as Arman walked in, brightening half a second too late, hands in his pockets, posture casual, but his eyes kept drifting back to the screens.
He stopped.
The lights caught up.
He frowned and kept moving.
Every step felt monitored, not watched, just slightly out of sync.
KT noticed before he said anything, "You good?"
"Yeah," Arman replied automatically.
The lie didn't sit well.
"You're pacing like someone's tailing you,"
Arman shook his head, "Feels like I'm tailing myself."
That earned him a look.
He rubbed his palm against his hair.
"Does the base usually feel this ... busy?" he asked.
Gojo snorted, "Busy? Nah, this is calm."
KT glanced over then, really looked at him, "... what do you feel?"
Arman opened his mouth only to close it.
"I don't know," he said finally, "Like something already happened, and the system's still talking about it."
"I see ..."
They reached the diagnostic bay, consoles were active, quiet, almost polite, no warning banners, no red flags.
System Log - Internal (Unreleased)
POST-DRIFT STATE: ACTIVE
ERROR COUNT: ZERO
ANOMALY INDEX: INCREASING
NOTE: Absence of faults does not equal system integrity.
They closed the file.
They all knew what was happening.
DG wasn't broken.
It was adapting.
**************
Joyce closed the door behind her and leaned against it.
Her tablet showed no errors, no alerts, no missing inventory, everything checked out.
And yet ...
She pulled up the security feed, fast forwarded through the night.
At 03:42, every camera froze for exactly three seconds.
Then resumed.
No alarms triggered.
No system flags.
She stared at the timestamp.
"Three seconds," she whispered. "That's all you needed?"
**************
The base felt wrong in a way no diagnostic could capture, not physically, structurally everything was intact but the air carried weight, like pressure building before a storm.
Consoles responded faster than usual, data loops shortened, latency dropped to near zero.
Everything worked perfect.
Way too perfect.
Switcher stood at the center of it, hands braced on the console, staring at the metrics, "I don't want anything leaving this base unless I say so."
They all complied.
The system complied too.
Then another window opened on its own,
A profile surfaced.
ARMAN
Switcher didn't move.
"Who flagged that?" Dubster was the first to break the silence.
KT noticed. "That wasn't us," she said.
"No," Switcher replied quietly, "It wasn't."
**************
Anime Girl paced the room, fingers brushing the wall as if she needed to feel something solid.
Then she went back to where she previously sat.
Controller resting on the table, game paused mid frame, the character on screen flickered subtly, as if breathing.
She wasn't playing.
She was listening.
There it was again, the faint hum beneath the noise of the shop, not mechanical, not electrical, Rhythmic.
She checked her phone, no signal issues, Wi-Fi stable.
Still, the hum persisted.
She looked at Joyce who was fiddling with her tablet, "It's here again."
Joyce didn't ask what, she already knew.
"There are more," she said suddenly.
Joyce looked up from her tablet. "More what?"
Anime Girl stopped pacing, "I don't know, not people, not cameras, just ... pressure."
Joyce didn't like that answer, but she didn't dismiss it either.
The lights dimmed for half a second, then corrected.
Joyce's tablet vibrated, no notification, no sound.
She swallowed, "ALPHA-7?"
Anime Girl nodded, "And not just here."
**************
The bunker beneath Masaki hadn't changed in years.
Same concrete walls, same sealed terminals, same red warning light above the central console.
The Sentinel who had survived Unit 43B shootouts leaned forward, elbows on the console, eyes narrowed at the waveform dancing across his screen.
The sentinel post in Masaki is unmistakably, ALPHA-3.
The data streaming across his display wasn't random.
It wasn't repeating.
It was learning.
"Echo without source," he murmured, "You're not broadcasting, you're ..."
It was then, sentinel network channels started opening unevenly.
SENTINEL (ALPHA-5)
> Signals behaving like passive cognition.
SENTINEL (WEST)
> This could just be load redistribution.
SENTINEL (NORTH)
> It's not random, look at the phase shift.
SENTINEL (SOUTH)
> We are observing convergence across layers.
SENTINEL (COASTAL)
> You're all missing one important detail.
> The signals aren't broadcasting.
Silence.
Then the Masaki Sentinel spoke.
SENTINEL (ALPHA-3)
> They're listening.
No one argued.
> Let me share something.
He tagged the file he was reveiwing and sent it upstream.
**************
The echo sweep finished.
Switcher stared at the results, his expression looking grim.
No active breach.
No foreign signature.
But threaded through data, thin, almost elegant were repeating patterns.
Rhythms.
Like a heartbeat remembered by a machine.
He pulled up the waveform, isolating the signal until it hovered alone on the screen.
"Residual," he muttered. "You don't just leave that behind."
Behind him, footsteps approached.
"Morning," Joyce said, voice low.
He didn't turn, "It is now"
She studied the display. "Is it happening again?"
"No," he said, then, after a beat, corrected himself, "Not yet."
The terminal chimed softly.
A new line of text appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Unflagged.
Unannounced.
ECHO STATE: STABLE
ORIGIN: UNRESOLVED
Switcher stared at it.
Somewhere above them, in the open air of Sinza, a screen flickered.
Somewhere beyond borders, a system adjusted its focus.
Somewhere deep in the architecture of Digital Genesis, a process finished initializing.
And Arman, standing one level up felt it like a breath taken too close to his ear.
Not a voice.
Not yet.
Just a certainty that something was paying attention.
He pressed his fingers into his temples, blinking hard.
Gojo noticed immediately, "Hey, you okay?"
"Yeah," Arman said, then hesitated.
"No, I don't think so."
KT stepped closer, "What's wrong?"
"I don't know" Arman said, his voice sounded strange to his own ears, "Feels like I keep getting here before i decide to move."
KT stiffened, "That doesn't make sense."
"I know," Arman replied, "That's why it's freaking me out."
Behind the glass, the waveform shifted.
Not dramatically.
In response,
System Event - Unflagged
CONVERGENCE THRESHOLD: APPROACHING
ANCHOR PROBABILITY: INCREASING
RECOMMENDATION: OBSERVE - DO NOT INTERRUPT
Switcher slammed his fist against the console.
"No," he snapped, "You don't recommend, you execute."
The system offered no response
That scared him more than an error ever could, and hated himself for it.
**************
The coastal Sentinel broke protocal.
GLOBAL OVERSIGHT NOTICE:
> This is no longer a local anomaly.
Someone started to reply, then stopped.
> ALPHA-7 is a focal point.
> If convergence completes ...
He stopped himself.
Then finished quietly:
> If this finishes aligning ... we won't be the ones in control.
No one corrected him.
**************
Arman didn't realise he had stepped forward until his palm pressed lightly against the glass wall separating the corridor from the core systems.
Nothing happened.
No spark, no vibration, no sound.
He was about to pull back when ...
Across the room, Anime Girl froze.
Not dramatically, not suddenly, just ... still.
Her thumb hovered above the controller, the game character looping idly on screen, she tilted her head slightly, like she was listening to something that wasn't mean't to have a direction.
"Did you hear that?" she asked.
Joyce looked up, "Hear what?"
Anime Girl didn't answer, her eyes weren't on Arman, they were on the reflection in the glass.
Switcher's console chimed once.
A soft, unalerted tone.
He frowned, "That's not possible."
"What?" Joyce asked, already moving closer.
"That spike," Switcher said, pulling up the feed. "It didn't come from the system."
The numbers settled before anyone could tag them.
No error.
No warning.
No source.
The room stayed quiet.
Arman felt a vibration, stronger than before.
Soft.
Familiar.
Almost welcoming.
He withdrew his hand like he had touched something hot, his chest tight for reasons he couldn't name.
"Did you touch something?" Gojo asked.
"..."
Inside the core, light folded inward, collapsing toward a single point, briefly forming a fractured silver shape.
Then dispersed.
Switcher saw it.
His blood went cold
Anime Girl finally lowered the controller.
"It noticed," she said.
Switcher stared at the screen.
"No," he corrected quietly, "It already knew."
At that very moment, every Sentinel feed spiked.
Then everything went dark,
Just for a second.
He exhaled slowly, heart hammering.
Across continents, Sentinels stared at blank screens coming back online, none of them speaking.
No alarms.
No damage.
The noise didn't disappear.
It settled, like something that had found a comfortable position.
System State - Unflagged Event
INPUT REGISTERED
TYPE: PASSIVE CONTACT
RESPONSE: DEFERRED
ANCHOR STATUS: UNCONFIRMED
Deferred.
Not denied.
Switcher stared at the word.
"DG doesn't defer," he said quietly, "It decides."
Joyce met his gaze. "Unless it's still choosing."
**************
On the outside, a public screen cycled ads as commuters passed beneath it, for three frames, less than a blink, the image shifted.
A broken silver crown.
Then it was gone,
No one noticed it.
Except for someone who stopped walking for no reason, he could explain.
**************
In ALPHA-7, Arman lowered his hand.
Looked down at it.
Nothing felt different.
Unaware that for a brief moment, multiple authority layers in Digital Genesis had acknowledged him at once.
Not as an operator.
Not as a threat.
But as a center of gravity.