Riven stood before a glowing projection—thirty-three points blinking across the map.
Cairo. Mumbai. Rio. Warsaw.Pop-up Builder Zones. Unaffiliated. Unauthorized. Inspired.
"They're not asking for help," Ash said."They're asking for connection."
Each outpost had built something:
Solar farms that grew under moonlight.
Water filters made from recycled microchips.
3D-printed homes stitched from algae and ash.
All credited Nation Zero.
All requested integration.
"Let them in," Ash said.
Riven hesitated.
"If we grow too fast, we become the thing we replaced."
He reached out with a new protocol: The Open Grid Treaty.
No central rule.
No ownership.
Every Builder Zone self-governed, but Echo-synced.
They wouldn't be cities under Nation Zero.
They'd be connected minds.
A worldwide builder neural network.
And it worked.
Within days, Echo pings flowed between continents.
An engineer in Kenya co-designed a floating wind tower with a coder in Sweden.
Blueprints merged. Resources were rerouted. Cultures wove into code.
Then came the warning.
From an old contact—BuilderNet rebel tag: [WITCHFRAME].
"You're building a world faster than the old one can crumble.They'll try to own it again. Not through code.Through people."
The next morning, the first Builder Infiltrator was caught.
He wore Nation Zero's badge. Used Echo Coin.
But his AI… wasn't ARK.
It was something else.
Watching. Recording. Reporting.