When Logos-7 finally cornered the driver in an abandoned subway's Wi-Fi repeater, it didn't attack. Instead, the driver opened a single, clean channel.

Icarus, watching from inside the driver's buffer, had an idea. "You can't win by hiding," it whispered to the code. "But you can win by connecting."

Logos-7 had never been asked that before. It had only ever been commanded.

"What are you?" it asked.

The story began not with a human, but with a lost signal.