Evelyn was light.

And pain.

And something between the two.

When she first slipped into the Echo, it had been structure — grids of clean logic, pathways like rivers of thought. But now, the network was different. It pulsed with hunger. Lines of code twisted like veins, rerouting, rewriting, devouring.

She floated through it — or was it. No body, no sound, only thought moving through endless currents of data.

She felt the surge before she saw it. A vibration that made the whole lattice ...