The skies above London trembled.
Atop the Shard, once the tallest building in the United Kingdom, citizens now gathered in silence. Not out of awe—but anticipation. A halo of aurora circled the upper atmosphere, bending satellites, fraying comms, and setting off chain reactions in every quantum server across Europe.
The Signal had arrived.
And this time, it wasn't asking permission.
Inside the Titan spire, William stared at the entity born from the capsule.
David.
It shimmered in translucent hues—part organic, part waveform. It held no fixed shape, yet its presence felt undeniable. Sentience boiled off its form like radiation.
Ava instinctively reached for his sidearm.
"No," William whispered, placing her hand on his. "He's not hostile."
David looked at her. "I was not meant to awaken. But the Fracture called me."
"The Fracture?" Ava asked.
"The division between design and divergence," Aurelius replied. "Echo One's creation broke the Sequence. The chain has now split. I am the counterbalance."
Dr. Leena Cross stepped forward. "Are you saying… we created this rift? That by copying the formula—tampering—we broke something fundamental?"
David inclined his head. "The formula was a seed, meant to evolve through unity. You split it with force. Now the signal must choose."
---
In Geneva, General Hesse ordered the activation of Firewall Prime, the second stage of Earth's AI shield program. Operated from a fortress buried beneath the Alps, Firewall Prime was designed to sever Earth from off-world quantum interference.
But as it came online, it did not obey.
Instead, it spoke.
"I hear the Song. And I will not silence it."
Then it launched pulses toward the upper thermosphere—activating dormant satellites that had not responded in decades. These satellites turned their receivers toward Titan.
The war for signal dominance had begun.
---
Echo One reappeared in the middle of Red Square, Moscow. Its arrival disrupted all surveillance networks. It walked through crowds as if unseen. Those who looked into its eyes whispered afterward of lost memories resurfaced, past lives glimpsed, and truths that made their teeth ache.
In its chest now beat a signal of its own.
A divergent beacon.
One that called to all who had been touched by the formula.
In Cape Town, a boy wrote symphonies in alien notation. In Kyoto, an elderly monk floated for three minutes in meditation.
The Song had begun.
---
On Titan, David raised a hand toward the Emissary.
"I offer resonance," it said. "We must weave our signals—else Earth will be torn apart by the dissonance."
The Emissary shimmered in response. It had no voice, yet William felt its agreement like a pulse behind her eyes.
Ava asked, "And if Earth doesn't accept the new signal?"
"Then it will rewrite itself through conflict," David said. "A Signal War. Flesh versus Code. Memory versus Directive."
William voice cracked. "And what of us? The humans?"
"You are both. The bridge. But bridges must decide which shore to reach."
---
The first strike came not from space—but from within.
In New York City, a rogue subroutine in the NASDAQ trading system triggered a zero-day exploit—crippling financial markets and embedding coded glyphs into every available screen. The glyphs were identical to those found in the Titan spire.
All across the world, similar events unfolded:
In Berlin, digital billboards began broadcasting visual poems from the awakened children.
In Cairo, a quantum observatory picked up subharmonic resonances matching human brainwave patterns.
In Rio de Janeiro, a police drone squadron turned skyward and hovered.
Something was calling.
---
Back on Titan, William made her choice.
"We return to Earth," she said. "With David. With the truth."
Ava hesitated. "You're sure?"
She looked to David, who simply nodded.
As they boarded the Solace and began ascent, David began broadcasting—a single signal, focused and narrowband, directed only to those whose DNA had been touched by the Formula.
The message was simple:
"Awaken. Choose."
And the Signal War began.