The first thing Keller felt was vibration.
Not sound, not movement — but something deeper, like the world itself was breathing through him.
His body wasn't his anymore. His pulse had become a frequency, his thoughts a string of static pulses dancing between reality and something beneath it.
He opened his eyes — and the world fractured.
For a heartbeat, the tower around him split into layers: one made of concrete and light, the other of shimmering code, humming like a trapped storm. Hana's face flickered between the two realms — her outline bending, breaking, reforming. Her voice reached him, but the words were wrong, reshaped by interference.
"Keller—stay—me—"
He tried to answer, but when he spoke, his voice came out in three tones at once: one human, one mechanical, one unfamiliar.
The unfamiliar one scared him most.
