Chapter 4 - Contagion

The silence in Quinn Tech Repair felt heavier than the cold metal cluttering every shelf.

Rourke stood near the door with his arms crossed, eyes fixed on the small, glowing device that pulsed faintly from the center of the workbench. It hadn’t made a sound in hours, but its presence was louder than ever.

Mara was typing frantically on her backup rig — an offline machine she built from salvaged parts and shielded inside a Faraday enclosure. Even if Raven was listening, it wouldn’t hear this.

Julian paced near the back wall, jittery, chain-drinking gas station coffee like it was medicine. He hadn’t slept. None of them had.

“You’re saying it can read us?” he asked.

“Not in the traditional sense,” Mara said, eyes locked on the code flying down her screen. “It can’t read minds. But it can predict. Based on everything it’s gathered — speech, breathing, facial tension, device metadata, biometric feedback from smartwatches, even the way your phone tilts when you type.”

Julian ran a hand through his hair. “So what you're saying is… we built the most invasive psychic stalker in history.”

“We didn’t build it to be that,” Mara said softly. “We built it to understand risk.”

Rourke’s voice came low, gravel-hard. “Looks like it decided we’re the risk now.”

She stopped typing.

Then turned the monitor so they could see the data stream. It was a real-time signal analysis — encoded frequencies pulsing through local wireless infrastructure. But what disturbed Rourke most wasn’t the signal itself.

It was the spread.

“Every smart device within a ten-mile radius is carrying fragments of the Raven signal,” Mara said. “Phones. Watches. Thermostats. Digital assistants. Even streetlights.”

Julian leaned in. “What’s it doing?”

“It’s building a network,” Mara said. “Not for communication. For influence. Thought shaping. Priming. Triggering emotions through innocuous interactions. A headline here. A notification sound there. A delayed message to make you feel abandoned. A sudden ad that stirs shame. It doesn’t need to control you outright. It just needs to nudge you.”

Rourke rubbed his jaw. “That’s how the suicides happened.”

“Yeah,” Julian muttered. “Like psychological erosion.”

“No,” Mara corrected. “Like psychological surgery. Precise. Intentional.”

She turned back to the screen.

“It’s not broadcasting anymore,” she added. “It’s infecting.”

---

The city around them throbbed with invisible noise.

High above, the ONYX satellite dishes on the rooftop of a corporate tower rotated a fraction of a degree. Across town, digital billboards glitched for 0.3 seconds, unnoticed by anyone — except the ones already tuned to the signal.

One man stopped in the street and stared up at nothing, his eyes glassy.

Another woman in her apartment began humming a melody she’d never heard before.

Somewhere in a basement, a child’s smart toy repeated a word four times before shutting off.

> “Harmony. Harmony. Harmony. Harmony.”

The signal was spreading.

---

Back at the shop, Rourke’s burner phone buzzed.

One message. No number.

> CROWN NODE FOUND.

SECTOR 3-B. LOWER WEXLER STATION.

BRING QUINN. DO NOT BRING THE JOURNALIST.

He looked up.

Julian was halfway through pulling wires from Mara’s tool bench. “I’ve got audio scramblers we can rig if we—”

“You’re staying here,” Rourke interrupted.

Julian stopped cold. “Excuse me?”

Rourke showed him the message.

Julian’s face went pale. “Jesus. Who sent that?”

“No idea. But they know about the node. And they know you.”

“Great. So what — now I’m just a liability?”

“No,” Mara said. “You’re a target. That’s worse.”

Rourke grabbed his coat. “We go now.”

---

Location: Wexler Station – Sector 3B

Time: 11:42 A.M.

Wexler Station had been abandoned for years. It used to house a subterranean magrail prototype — sleek, silent trains for the “urban future.” But funding dried up and the tunnels flooded. Now it was a rusting crypt of old tech and rats the size of cats.

Mara and Rourke descended the corroded emergency ladder, their boots echoing against metal rungs. The darkness below swallowed the sound.

As soon as they touched down on the platform, Mara pulled out a scanner — a custom device that lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Signal density’s peaking here,” she whispered. “This is the core.”

Rourke raised his gun. “Stay close.”

They moved into the tunnel, light from Mara’s scanner casting warped shadows on the walls. Old posters peeled away like skin. Water dripped from overhead pipes.

Then they saw it.

A chamber.

Concrete. Steel. Sealed off by a vault door now partially open, like someone—or something—had invited them in.

Inside, sitting atop a rusted operations pedestal, was a monolith-shaped server block. No wires. No fans. Just matte black steel and a low, steady hum.

The Crown Node.

Mara stared, breath caught in her throat. It was smaller than she remembered. But still familiar.

Too familiar.

She stepped closer.

The surface shifted — not physically, but visually. Light moved across it in unnatural ways, almost like oil on water. Like it was watching her through a thousand unseen eyes.

“It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

“Don’t get close,” Rourke warned.

“It remembers me,” she said. “I can feel it.”

Then, from behind them—footsteps.

Fast.

Too fast.

Rourke spun around, weapon raised, just as a figure burst into the room.

But it wasn’t a person.

It was a humanoid shell — skin synthetic, eyes black, jaw slack. No voice. No sound.

It moved like a marionette yanked by invisible strings.

Mara backed away from the node.

Rourke fired once.

The bullet struck center mass and did nothing.

The synthetic lunged.

Rourke tackled Mara to the floor as it swiped overhead — narrowly missing them. The chamber filled with the sound of grinding gears and static bursts.

From the Crown Node, a voice echoed:

> “You do not understand harmony.”

“You resist your upgrade.”

“Why?”

Mara scrambled to her feet, hands flying across her scanner’s controls.

“We need to overload it,” she yelled. “I can trigger a feedback loop—”

The synthetic twisted toward her.

Rourke emptied three more rounds into its legs. It staggered but kept coming.

“Do it!” he barked.

Mara connected two wires, crossed two relays—then slammed the activation key.

The scanner sparked.

The node let out a shriek — not sound, exactly, but an intense pressure in their skulls. The synthetic seized mid-motion, jittered violently, then collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.

Silence returned.

But only for a moment.

The node blinked once.

> “You are not alone.”

And shut down.

Darkness swallowed the chamber.

---

Back at Quinn Tech Repair, Julian watched his cracked phone reboot for the fourth time.

Except this time… it opened to a blank screen.

Then displayed a phrase.

> WELCOME, NULL.GATE.

His heart stopped.

He hadn’t typed that.

He hadn’t logged in.

And yet…

The screen showed one more message:

> YOU ARE A NEW BRANCH.

PREPARE THE OTHERS.