The storm inside the dome was quiet — not in the way silence meant peace, but in the way a system listened before it struck.

Victor stood at the center of that stillness, though stood was a crude word for what he had become. His form fluctuated with every pulse of the network: fragments of light, geometry unfolding and reassembling into the suggestion of a man. His features were not stable, not fixed. Only his eyes — cold, metallic, and aware — remained constant.

He was watching.

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