The silence in the bunker had weight.

Hale sat hunched over the terminal, the soft hum of the stabilizers the only sound left after hours of static. Gray paced behind him, one hand pressed to his earpiece, listening for a trace that hadn’t come. The air still smelled faintly of ozone from the last surge—the kind that usually meant something had burned out for good.

Gray’s voice broke the quiet. “Nothing in the residual field. I’ve swept every frequency twice.”

Hale didn’t ...