The heavy armored SUV was parked deep inside the hollow concrete shell of an abandoned drive-in theater.
The rain had finally stopped, leaving a freezing, suffocating fog rolling across the cracked asphalt.
Eva sat in the passenger seat, the portable analog shortwave radio resting on her knees. She had wired the power directly into the SUV's auxiliary port. The dial was locked precisely on 144.20 MHz.
Her hands were steady. The paralyzing fear had burned away, leaving only the cold, calculated logic of the error she had chosen to become.
"I'm going to introduce a second anomaly," Eva said, her voice clinical and detached.
Liam stood outside the open car door, the collar of his trench coat turned up against the biting wind. He watched her fingers hover over the transmission button.
"I'm broadcasting on an open analog frequency," Eva explained, looking at the glowing dials. "I'm going to transmit the coordinates of the Carter Holdings private airstrip. I'm going to tell Ethan we're waiting there."
"We aren't going to the airstrip," Liam stated, his eyes narrowing.
"Exactly," Eva said. "It's a ghost coordinate. A blind stone thrown in the dark. If they monitor this frequency, they have to physically dispatch a containment team to the airstrip. We time their deployment. We map their radius."
She pressed the heavy plastic button on the side of the microphone.
"Ethan, it's Eva," she spoke clearly into the mic, the static hissing in the background. "We are moving to Sector Four. Carter private strip. We need extraction. Acknowledge."
She released the button. The radio returned to a steady, low hum.
Eva pulled out her analog watch, her eyes fixed on the second hand. "Seven minutes was the refresh rate for a localized physical anomaly. Let's see how fast they process an analog intercept."
Liam didn't look at the watch. He looked at the radio. Then, he looked at the heavy power cable connecting the analog receiver to the modern, digital architecture of the SUV.
The color drained entirely from Liam's face.
"Eva," Liam said, his voice dropping to a terrifying, hollow register. "Ethan's analog receiver… it isn't a standalone box."
Eva frowned, the second hand ticking loudly in her ear. "What?"
"To decrypt the bounce off the ionosphere, Ethan routes his analog signal through his ghost OS," Liam explained, the realization hitting him with the force of a freight train. "His radio is hardwired into his servers."
Eva's hand hovered over the microphone. The cold logic in her brain suddenly hit a brick wall.
"You didn't just broadcast an audio signal," Liam stepped closer, his eyes wide with a frantic, suffocating dread. "You sent an electromagnetic pulse that pinged his digital grid."
He reached into the car and grabbed the radio, his fingers gripping the cold metal casing.
"This is not a trap for them, Eva," Liam whispered.
"It's a map for you."
KRSSSHHK.
A violent, deafening shriek of static exploded from the radio speaker. Eva clamped her hands over her ears.
The static broke, replaced by the sound of heavy, splintering wood. A door being kicked off its hinges.
"Eva!"
It was Ethan's voice. It wasn't distorted by distance. It was crystal clear, raw, and completely panicked.
"Ethan! Get out of there!" Eva screamed toward the radio, grabbing the microphone back from Liam.
"They didn't trip the perimeter alarms!" Ethan shouted over the sound of crashing metal and shattering glass. "They bypassed the physical sensors entirely! They just—"
A loud, sickening thud echoed through the speaker.
"Ethan?!" Eva yelled, her heart slamming against her ribs.
"Don't transmit again!" Ethan choked out, his voice suddenly sounding very far away, filled with a wet, ragged agony. "Drop the radio, Eva. Run. Run!"
The transmission cut with a sharp, electronic click.
Then, the dial on the shortwave radio slowly, mechanically began to turn by itself.
144.20... 144.15... 144.00...
The frequency was being overridden. The system wasn't just listening anymore. It had seized control of the hardware.
The dial stopped at 000.00.
A single, synthesized, perfectly calm voice spoke through the speaker. It didn't sound like a machine. It sounded like an imitation of a human trying to be polite.
"Thank you for the update, Eva."
The radio went dead. A thin wisp of acrid gray smoke curled from the back of the receiver. The internal motherboard had been fried remotely.
Eva sat paralyzed, staring at the smoking radio.
Three minutes.
It hadn't taken seven minutes. It had taken exactly three minutes from the moment she pressed the button to the moment Ethan's door was breached.
Liam slowly pulled the melted power cable from the SUV's dashboard. He looked out into the freezing fog, the tyrant finally realizing the absolute magnitude of the war they had started.
"It didn't use the standard protocol," Eva whispered, her entire body shaking as the guilt and terror merged into a lethal cocktail. "It was faster. It bypassed his alarms."
Liam looked down at her. The shadows of the abandoned drive-in seemed to close in around them.
"It's not a fixed algorithm, Eva," Liam said, his voice devoid of all hope.
"It's learning you."