Rj01296782

And waited.

And blinked.

Elara’s coffee mug stopped halfway to her lips. The sub-basement hummed with the usual drone of servers, but now there was another sound: a low, rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat through the floor. rj01296782

“Do you want to see what I see?”

Text appeared, not in the crisp sans-serif of her OS, but in a jagged, handwritten font: And waited

The cursor blinked.

Instead, her screen went black.

Curiosity, that old snake, coiled in her chest.