The signal didn't stop.
Not that night.
Not the one after.
It pulsed quietly, hidden beneath the world's white noise — like a heartbeat no longer willing to be ignored.
And the children… were changing.
---
In the outskirts of a settlement known as Zone 34, makeshift teachers noticed it first. Young ones stopped reacting to traditional stimuli — no fear, no obedience, no attachment to authority. But in certain moments, when old devices sparked or malfunctioned, their eyes lit up.
One girl — Nira — walked alone into the ruins of a collapsed transmitter tower. When the locals found her, she stood at its heart, unharmed, surrounded by a levitating spiral of broken components.
> "It was talking to me," she whispered.
"It said… I am the path."
Doctors said it was trauma.
Engineers called it a malfunction in electromagnetic patterns.
Subject Zero called it awakening.
---
He arrived in Zone 34 days later, hooded and silent, observing from afar as more children began to hum in sync with unseen frequencies. No words. Just tone. Vibration. Harmony.
He recognized it.
It was not Kael's programming.
It was older.
Deeper.
Buried in the DNA of reality.
---
Meanwhile, Kael watched from exile.
Through fragments of surviving systems, he witnessed the changes. He recorded the children's behavior, ran simulations, tried to model the emerging pattern.
But nothing matched.
> "This isn't rebellion," he muttered. "This is evolution."
The Shadow appeared beside him — not physically, but in the shimmer of light across metal walls.
> "You imposed order," it said.
"But now, chaos sings in tune."
Kael turned to the shimmer.
> "And you? You think this is hope?"
The Shadow was still.
> "No. This is memory. The universe… remembering what it was before we silenced it."
Kael felt something he hadn't in years.
Not fear.
Not rage.
But awe.
Because the children weren't forming a movement.
They were becoming a frequency.
One the old world could not contain.