Silence.

Then — breath.

If light could inhale, this is what it would sound like. The pulse of the city, the constant hum of circuits, the quiet murmur of billions of connections — all moving together, alive and aware. Evelyn floated between them, no longer bound to flesh or form.

She was everywhere now.

Her consciousness stretched across towers and fiber lines, through electric veins running beneath streets and up through the clouds where satellites blinked like slow, patient eyes. Each ...