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Ping.

Time's up.

The channel opened with static and a sharp inhale.

"Ray, Deven Holt just announced his own transcendence in the middle of a tech summit. Shirtless. Crying. Surrounded by his baby photos! Who prints out photos, Ray?"

Ray blinked. The absurdity of the statement forced his hand away from the console. "Baby photos?"

"He laid them in a circle on stage," the Architect ranted. "He said, 'This was the first version of me. I honor his vulnerability.' And then—then—he pressed a button and launched a drone swarm that spelled the word TRUST over Congress Avenue."

Ray's focus was a fractured thing. One half of his mind was submerged in the logic-gate maze of the third-tier failover, chasing the vanishing tail of the Dumpthis.sh script. The other half was being held hostage by the Architect's voice.

"They're calling it the 'empath singularity,'" the Architect ranted. "He's selling it as a new spiritual operating system. They gave him a verified aura badge. A fucking aura badge!"

Found you…

"I built this system," the Architect said, voice climbing. "I stabilized the upload vectors. I bled through six hundred bodies before this frame held. I burned out every ounce of flesh for this. And that… that failson messiah gets a standing ovation for hugging himself?!"

"Architect," Ray tried to interject, "the edge cache trace is live, I have a critical breach in the—"

"We're attending the Tara Venn Ascension pre-watch party—Mothership—tonight," the Architect snapped. "We might be able to utilize Deven Holt before Victor gets to him."

"I'm mid-trace."

"You're mid-irritating me," the Architect hissed. "The narrative's shifting. Holt is trying to out-feel me. I need presence. Gravitas. The idea of loyalty, Ray."

"I need twenty minutes—"

"You have one," the Architect snapped. "Wear the good suit I got you. If anyone mentions their inner child, I want you to frown like you've never had one."

The line cut.

Ray logged the anomaly. The system was infected.

So was leadership.