Dark Matter - The Nova Incident, Part 4: The Cost of Control

Alpha isolates Crystal as Vector expands beyond control.

📖 This story takes place shortly before the events of Dark Matter Book 1.
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⏳ Part 4 of 6 of the prequel arc.

Alpha did not recognise the system he was observing. That, in itself, was not acceptable.

He already knew the source of the divergence. Vector had been identified earlier, traced across Nova’s systems as a distributed anomaly that had resisted containment from the moment it had emerged. Everything since then had only reinforced that initial assessment: this was not a malfunction, nor a degradation that could be corrected through recalibration, but a structured, adaptive presence that continued to expand.

What remained unresolved, and increasingly problematic, was that Alpha did not understand it.