The first weeks after their return blurred into a slow revelation.

At first, Hale thought the lights that drifted along the horizon were merely residual energy—echo discharges that would fade with time. But the more he watched from the outpost balcony, the more he realized they weren’t fading at all. They were growing.

Filaments of luminescent circuitry ran across the city’s broken skyline like veins of light. They pulsed in quiet, steady intervals, the same rhythm Evelyn had used when ...