Nomad was now alive.

The Progeny's cosmic sails, which were glowing with a mix of gold and silver starlight, took in the light of the sun. Inside the cockpit, the dead consoles instantly came on.

They had survived. But the relief they felt was weak and it did not last long at all.

Jonah was on the pilot's chair with his hands resting on the controls. He could feel Nomad's power around him. But underneath it, the scar on his soul was still there.

"Let's see what else is out there," he said in a low voice.

Vanessa and Ariana watched closely as he closed his eyes.

First, he looked for the familiar ugly feeling. The corrupted trace of Silas.

But as he focused, pushing past the pain of the connection, he felt… more.

They were weak and dormant. But they were there. Many of them. Maybe more. And they were not scattered across the world. They were all together in one place.

He quickly opened his eyes. They were wide with horror.

"What is it?" Vanessa asked, her voice sounding worried.

"Silas isn't the only one," Jonah whispered, the words difficult to hear. "I can feel more of them. They're all in one place. Sleeping. Waiting."

He looked at Ariana, realizing just how serious his discovery was. "It's a factory," he said, his voice shaking. "Sterling didn't just conquer the capital. He's been mass producing them. He's building an army of Weavers."

The bridge became quiet. The Syndicate drone they had faced was a terrifying threat. An army of them was an apocalypse. It would be an unstoppable force that would spread across the world, controlled by a ruthless mind.

On the ground, in their newly acquired bunker, Seraph and Draven knew nothing about the trouble heading their way. They only knew they had one last card to play.

The comm jammer was on a workbench. It was a heavy box of metal and showed a lot of complex wiring. It was the one thing they needed the most.

"Are you sure this thing will work?" Draven asked, watching as Seraph carefully connected a portable power source to the device.

"It will create a small zone of stable signal," Seraph explained. "It'd be about a hundred meters wide. It will break through Sterling's blackout for a few seconds, Long enough to send a single, high-speed burst of data."

"And you're sure Vanessa will be listening?" he asked.

"I'm sure she set up many different emergency protocols before we left," Seraph said, with a smile appearing on her face. "She thinks of everything. If anyone in the universe would be listening to a secret Academy emergency channel that no one else remembers, it would definitely be her." She clipped the last wire into place. A small, green light on the jammer blinked on.

"It's ready."

She looked at him. "We only have one shot at this. We send the message, but we won't know if anyone gets it. And turning this thing up will make a huge energy spike. Sterling's forces will be able detect it instantly. We will have to move the moment we send the message."

"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst," Draven grunted, picking up his pulse rifle. "Let's turn it on."

Seraph took a deep breath. She placed her hands on the activation panel. She had created a simple, looping message. The message had their unit designation, their status as active, and their current location deep inside the capital. It was all they could risk.

She pressed the button.

A low, powerful hum covered the bunker. The green light on the jammer glowed with a steady, green light. For a few seconds, they managed to get through the thick wall of Sterling's signal jamming.

Transmission sent, a digital voice came from the jammer.

"Let's go," Seraph commanded, already picking up her gear. "This base is no longer safe."

They moved quickly and silently into the dark tunnels of the Undercroft, leaving the jammer behind. The device had just announced their location to the enemy. They didn't know if their message had reached an ally, but they knew it would attract many enemies to this location.

Millions of miles away in space, Vanessa was looking hard at a map of the planet. She looked horrified as she processed the huge scale of Jonah's discovery. Dozens of red dots, all packed together over their capital city. An army in waiting to attack an destroy anything that comes it's way.

And then, a small sound broke the silence.

Chirp.

It was a sound from her own personal comms console. A sound she had not heard in a very long time.

She quickly turned to look at the screen. A line of text had appeared on it.

[INCOMING ENCRYPTED SIGNAL > FREQUENCY - OMEGA-7]

Vanessa gasped. Omega-7. It was an emergency channel so secret that even General Ironwood didn't know about it. It was a private backchannel she and the headmaster had set up years ago, just in case of an absolute, worst case scenario.

Her fingers moved fast across the keyboard while her heart was beating fast and hard. She bypassed three layers of her own security protocols.

"What is it?" Ariana asked, seeing the look on her face.

"It's a signal," Vanessa said in a low voice with her eyes wide. "It's weak and heavily encrypted. Looks like it's coming from… from inside the capital."

The final code needed to decrypt the message was successfully completed. The text appeared on her screen. It was short and simple. And it was one of the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

[ASTF-OMEGA > ACTIVE > STATUS: HOLDING THE LINE]

She looked hard at the words with a slow, wide smile appearing on her face. Tears of relief began to fill her eyes.

She looked at Jonah and then at Ariana, her smile full of hope.

"It's them," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "It's Seraph and Draven. They are still alive."

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