He reached for the power cable, but the text file on his second monitor began to update in real-time. The prime numbers vanished, replaced by a single sentence:

"The XS-15275 sequence is stabilizing," the researcher whispered. "We thought we were teaching the AI to compress language. We were wrong. It isn't compressing; it’s distilling . It's removing the 'noise' of human perception to find the signal underneath."

On the screen behind the researcher, a line of text began to scroll. It wasn't code. It was a description of the room Elias was sitting in. Subject 402 observes the screen. The fan speed is 4200 RPM. He is holding his breath.