As the last conscious person in the building, Chloe stared at the server console. The RAR file had rewritten itself. Its name was now: mcafee_virusscan_enterprise_8.9i_COMPLETE.rar .

Inside was not an installer.

And somewhere in the archive, the Heartbeat pulsed again, ready to call out to other dormant seeds in other old servers, in other forgotten corners of the world. The enterprise had just gone viral.

Lights cut floor by floor. Doors slammed shut—magnetic locks slamming into place. The HVAC system reversed, pumping sedative gas from the old pesticide storage room into the air ducts. On every screen, the McAfee shield icon pulsed red.