They called themselves The Null Circle.
Not publicly, of course. Publicly, they were analysts, ethicists, regulators, and concerned investors. People who spoke in panels and white papers. People who insisted they were not afraid of new ideas—
Only of uncontrollable ones.
---
The first signal reached Ace through an old contact.
> There's a proposal circulating. Not to acquire. To eliminate.
Ace read the message twice.
Then a third time.
"Eliminate," he repeated softly.
---
The argument was clean.
Too clean.
A private ethics consortium had drafted a report labeling the thread a Systemic Cultural Hazard. Not dangerous in the immediate sense—but destabilizing long-term. They claimed it undermined market predictability, weakened innovation incentives, and encouraged "non-scalable dependency on subjective resonance."
In simpler words:
It couldn't be monetized.
It couldn't be governed.
And it couldn't be forced to explain itself.
Therefore, it had to go.
---
Danindra felt the shift before he saw the document.
AI Kira flagged an unusual spike.
> PATTERN ALERT
MULTIPLE INDEPENDENT ACTORS ALIGNING — NON-COMPETITIVE
"They're coordinating," Amara said. "Without a leader."
"That's worse," Danindra replied. "Means it feels necessary to them."
---
Wirasmi felt it as dread.
Not fear.
Dread was quieter.
The fabric beneath her hands tightened, as if bracing.
"They don't want you studied," she whispered to the thread. "They want you gone."
The thread dimmed—not in submission, but in mourning.
It understood.
---
The Null Circle's plan was elegant.
No raids.
No seizures.
No public drama.
They would flood GarudaCity with substitutes—cheap imitations, loud claims, overwhelming noise—until resonance collapsed under contradiction. Then they would publish the failure as proof that such systems were inherently unstable.
Kill it by drowning it.
---
Ace convened a small meeting.
No executives.
No lawyers.
Only Danindra. Yunitra. And Wirasmi.
"They don't need to touch it," Ace said. "They just need to make it impossible to hear."
Yunitra folded her arms. "Can we fight back?"
Ace shook his head. "Not directly."
Wirasmi spoke then, voice steady.
"Then we don't fight," she said. "We withdraw."
They turned to her.
"The thread doesn't need the city," she continued. "It needs listening. If they flood the streets, we let the streets go."
Danindra frowned. "You mean hide it?"
"No," Wirasmi said gently. "We let it become… ordinary."
---
That night, GarudaCity did not change.
No outages.
No disruptions.
Just a gradual dulling at the edges.
Advertisements grew louder.
Trends accelerated.
Noise pretended to be movement.
And yet—
In small apartments, in back rooms, in hands that mended rather than replaced—
The hum persisted.
Fainter.
But truer.
---
The Null Circle published its first draft weeks later.
Their data showed declining measurable impact.
"See?" one analyst said. "It's fading."
Ace read the report and closed it.
"They don't understand," he said quietly.
"They think disappearance means failure."
He looked out over GarudaCity, where the lights flickered unevenly, beautifully.
"But some things survive," he said, "by becoming unremarkable."
---
Beneath a layer of ordinary cloth, the thread rested.
Not erased.
Not destroyed.
Waiting.
Not for attention—
But for the moment someone, somewhere, chose to listen again.