The terminal screen flickered, and the usual green phosphor bled into a feral amber. A wolf’s silhouette formed, then shattered into code. A message appeared, typed in a dialect of machine language so old it predated the Silence Wars:

But to plant the loop, Kael had to go inside the Wolfteam’s network. Not as a user. As prey.

Then, for the first time in sixty years, the Wolfteam howled. Not in aggression. In release .

Kael looked at his forearm. The black barcode veins were gone. In their place, faint and silver, was the ghost of a wolf’s paw print.