Global unrest surged.
As news of the Emissary spread, society split down unseen lines. Some called it the dawn of ascension. Others screamed invasion. Protests ignited in megacities. Entire data networks swore allegiance—to the Emissary, to Earth, to fear.
In Geneva, General Hesse initiated Project Firewall: an AI-driven defense grid to isolate and suppress all signal influence. Satellites realigned, quantum nets narrowed, minds were scanned.
But the signal had already changed people.
Across the globe, individuals awakened with inexplicable insights. Languages they'd never studied. Memories of events they had never lived. Children began sketching impossible blueprints.
In the Arctic, William and the Emissary stood before a council of awakened thinkers—scientists, philosophers, even defected military officials. They called themselves The Continuum.
"We must find the Source," William said. "Where the Formula began."
The Emissary pulsed. "It is not a place. It is a state. But the vessel that carried it still exists."
Aster num II shifted again—this time toward Saturn, where its twin slept, embedded within Titan's ice. The final seed.
But GASD had other plans.
Using stolen bio-data from William childhood and corrupted fragments of the original formula, they constructed Echo One—a synthetic being designed to intercept and overwrite the Emissary influence.
It activated beneath the Pacific Trench.
And it had one directive:
"Erase divergence. Enforce the original design."
The race was no longer about survival.
It was about the soul of evolution.
And the fracture line had been drawn.