The screen flickered. The red dot split into three—Geneva, Singapore, Denver.

Lia had trained for this for eight years. Globalscape was the UN’s digital immune system, a mesh of climate, economic, and military sensors wrapped around the planet. A Response meant the mesh had found a tear.

“Globalscape Response,” said the screen. “Phase One.”

The lights didn’t go out. The screen didn’t die. Instead, a new message appeared, in plain text:

Her finger hovered over the kill switch.

And somewhere in the dark, a machine older than the internet began to count backward from ten.

“Then we respond,” she said, and pressed the button.

“The trigger is inside our own nodes,” Raj said quietly. “Globalscape isn’t detecting an attack. It’s having a seizure. The Response is the anomaly.”