Chapter 118 - CHAPTER 118 – RIVAL’S MAJOR THREAT

The first warning did not come from the main system. It came from a silent distortion in the internal financial grid that flickered once, then corrected itself as if it had never happened. Caro noticed it while reviewing background processes she was not supposed to be monitoring at that level, her fingers freezing above the console as a second anomaly repeated in a different sector. Three unrelated nodes blinked red at the exact same time before returning to green, but this time one of them did not return properly, it stayed faintly unstable for half a second longer than the rest, like something had hesitated inside the system.