The chamber inside Victor’s domain was impossibly vast.

A cathedral of light and data, its walls alive with flowing code that pulsed like veins in a colossal, mechanical heart. The air itself shimmered — each breath Hale took tasted like static, each movement left an afterimage.

At the center stood Victor.

He was no longer human — or maybe too human. A figure sculpted from light, clothed in layers of data and memory, his form shifting subtly with every flicker of the code around him. ...