INT. 'BYTE-BACK' COMPUTER REPAIR -NIGHT (1996)
The shop is dark, save for the glow of monitors. The single violet pixel from the echo blinks rhythmically on the main screen -a tiny, digital heartbeat. The victory from the previous night has curdled into a thick, suffocating paranoia.
KAELEN is running frantic scans, her face pale.
> They're looking for me. Not just the analog presence from before. This is different. It's him. Malakor. He's sweeping the networkswith hunter algorithms. They're primitive by my standards, but they're relentless.
ARIS is peering through the blinds of the front window, his breath fogging the glass.
Across the street, a non-descript sedan is parked. It's been there for an hour. A man inside is reading a newspaper, but he hasn't turned the page once.
> And we've got company on the outside, too. That car hasn't moved. These are the other guys. The ones from the data center.
They are caught. Malakor is hunting them in the digital world, and the Analog Ghosts are hunting them in the physical one. The shop, their sanctuary, has become a cage.
> We have to go. Now.
A frantic scramble begins.
Aris shoveslaptops and hard drives into bags. Kaelen carefully disconnects the Wayfinder. On impulse, Aris grabs the dusty, leather-bound journal that belonged to his grandfather, stuffing it deep into his bag without thinking.
They are abandoning everything else.
As they sneak out the back door into a rain-slicked alley, the man in the sedan across the street lifts a pair of binoculars. He speaks quietly into his cufflink.
> They're on the move.
INT. ABANDONED SUBWAY STATION NIGHT
Their new base of operations is deep beneath the city, in a forgotten subway station closed for decades. The air is damp and smells of cold stone. It is the perfect analog hiding place-a ghost on the city map, shielded by tons of earth and concretefrom digital surveillance.
Kaelen has the Wayfinder hooked up to a massive power main. The violet pixel on its screen is now joined by streams of incoming data from the echo. It's not a clear message, but a chaotic flood of raw information: encrypted financial transactions, power grid schematics for city blocks that don't exist yet, shipping manifests for shell corporations.
> It's working. It's showing me everything Malakor's algorithm is touching. But it's too much. It's just... noise. I can't find the pattern.
She is a historian of the grand sweep of time; the messy, granular details of this era's commerce are alien to her. But not to Aris. He leans over the projection, his eyes lighting up with recognition.
This isn't noise. This is a business plan.
Look. This transaction is for a controlling share in a chemical processing plant. This shipping manifest is for high-grade silicon wafers. And this power grid... he's not just building a digital network, Kaelen. He's acquiring the physical supply chain to create a global technology monopoly.
Aris, using his 20th-century knowledge, begins to connect the dots. He sees what Kaelen missed. Malakor isn't just trying to control the internet; he's trying to own the very components to build it, decades before his competitors even know they need them.
> He's not just conquering the future. He's buying the present.
INT. PIER 41, RED HOOK - NIGHT
The data points them to a single nexus: adisused shipping pier in Brooklyn. According to the manifests, a dozen shell corporations owned by Nexus Dynamics are routing key technological components through this one location. It's a logistical chokepoint.
Armed with this knowledge, Kaelen and Aris go to investigate, hoping to find a way to disrupt his operations. The pier is eerily silent, shrouded in fog rolling off the water.
They sneak into a massive, empty warehouse.
> There's nothing here. The echo's data was clear...
Suddenly, massive floodlights snap on, bathing the entire warehouse in blinding white light. They are exposed, standing in the center of a vast, empty space.shadows. They are not futuristic soldiers.
They are disciplined, professional agents in tactical gear, holding modern firearms.
Leading them is MR. SILAS, his expression calm and cold.
> An impressive trick, finding this place. My organization has been tracking these shipments for weeks. We simply allowed your... echo... to find the pattern for us.
Kaelen and Aris are surrounded. It wasn't Malakor's trap. It was a trap set by the Analog Ghosts.
> Who are you?
> We are the custodians. The ones who clean up the mess when reality springs a leak. We have been fighting a war in the shadows forfifty years, Princess Kaelen. A war against people like you. And like him.
Silas knows her title. He knows everything.
> To us, there is no difference between a benevolent chronomancer and a malevolent one. You are both anomalies. Cancers. And you must be contained.
He gestures to his agents, who raise their weapons.
> You have two choices. You can surrender your technology and your knowledge to me, right now. Or you can be erased. A footnote in a history you have no right to be in. The choice is yours.
FADE TO BLACK.
END OF EPISODE 4