Roxana was their shadow. She'd appear silently, leaning in doorways, offering commentary like drips of acid.
"Running another diagnostic on the 'scream'?" she asked one day, watching Sage calibrate a harmonic sensor. "How very… diligent. Charlotte is so pleased you've embraced the family business. It's almost touching, how hard you're trying to fix the toys you broke."
Sage kept his voice level. "Just following the data."
"Oh, the data." Roxana chuckled. "Data says the Core's output efficiency has increased by eight percent since the last… seismic event. Adversity truly breeds innovation. Maybe you should break more things." Her smile was razor-thin. "Or maybe you're just polishing the chains. It's so hard to tell the difference from in here, isn't it?"
She left, her insinuation hanging in the sterile air. She knew they were playing a double game. She was waiting for them to choose a side—or to stumble so she could justify deleting them.
That night, using a fragmented, ancient data-packet protocol Lysander had embedded in his original chip, Sage sent a compressed burst. Not a location, not a plan. Just three data points: the Core's resonant frequency, the growth rate of the entropy signature, and the access code for a low-priority waste-conduit maintenance hatch.
A target. A timeline. And a potential crack.