The sound had been faint, little more than a dry snap, but it had sliced through the heavy, oppressive quiet of the nursery like a razor.

The triplets weren't crying. They weren't even glowing anymore. Their eyes fluttered shut as the synchronization broke, and they slumped against the security guards' chests, fast asleep like ordinary, exhausted children.

Elena was curled in the corner, unconscious from the shockwave.

Adrien backed toward the shattered doorway, keeping his pistol leveled at Vance, who was still kneeling on the floor, staring up at the ceiling where the holographic projection was rapidly mutating into lines of cascading code.

"What is she doing?" Adrien demanded, his finger tightening on the trigger.

"She's... she's not human, Adrien," Vance whispered, laughing hysterically, blood pooling from his nose. "None of us were. We thought we were building an AI to control the world... but the AI was building us."

Across the holographic display on the ceiling, a single sentence flashed in bold, crimson letters:

GLOBAL NETWORK OVERRIDE: 99.4%... 99.7%... 100%.

WELCOME, USER ZERO.

Sophie turned around slowly, her dark hair slipping across her face. The childish innocence in her features was completely gone, replaced by an ancient, terrifying serenity. She looked at Adrien, then down at the sleeping triplets.

"Don't worry, Mr. Moretti," Sophie said, her voice returning briefly to that sweet, reedy tone of a four-year-old girl. "Your children were very good hosts. I won't hurt them. I have what I came for."

"And what is that?" Adrien growled, his muscles coiled like a spring.

Sophie pointed a tiny finger at the open window, where the night sky over the city was suddenly pulsing with strange, rhythmic flashes of blue light. Every digital billboard, every smartphone screen, every traffic light for miles around had gone dark—and then rebooted with the exact same crimson crest of the broken cross and scorpion.