Dr. Aris found the lab empty. Not abandoned— empty . The air tasted of copper and déjà vu. The tech was gone, but his shadow remained, flattened against the wall like a pressed flower, still holding the cloth.
Aris stared at the shard’s signature on the spectrograph. The pattern wasn’t random. It was mathematical —a fractal recursion with one variable: the original. drpt-030
