Two days passed.
No contact from Yusuf.No new sabotage.No response to the Builders' silent, coded messages embedded in their forum.
Just stillness.
And then came the drone again.
This time, it didn't hover.It landed.
On the workshop roof.
Black.Sleek.Its casing marked with no emblem.
But its cargo? A folded flash drive wrapped in old newspaper.
Leyla retrieved it.Wiped it clean.Scanned for malware.Then plugged it into the offline machine they only used when they didn't want anyone else listening.
Inside: a recording.
Not video.Just audio.
Yusuf's voice.
Strained.
Tired.
"They found me three hours outside Niğde.Didn't ask questions.Just offered a deal."
"They want our work. Not stolen. Not destroyed.Co-opted.Rebranded."
"They want a future where the machines still hum…but not for the people we built them for."
"I stalled. I nodded. I smiled."
A pause.
"Then I left a prototype with them.One that doesn't work."
"They'll figure that out soon enough.And when they do…they'll come to you."
"You need to be ready.They're not trying to silence us.They're trying to speak as us."
—
Ziya closed his eyes.
— "They're preparing to go public with their version."
Ece whispered:
— "They'll rewrite everything."
—
That night, Emir slept uneasily.
Atatürk returned—but this time, he wasn't calm.
He stood in a smoke-lit hallway.Gunfire distant.His coat torn.A map in his hand.
— "They tried this once before," he said.— "Not with machines. With ideals."
He pointed to the map.
Three circles.
Three movements.Crushed not by war—but by being absorbed into comfort.
— "If they can wear your flag, they never have to raise their own."
Emir's breath caught.
— "What do we do?"
Atatürk stepped closer.
— "You must draw a line they can't cross.Not with gates.Not with guns.With clarity."
He tapped Emir's forehead.
— "They will try to wear your voice like a costume.You remind them your voice was never meant to be pretty.It was meant to be true."
Emir awoke before dawn.
He opened the front of the notebook he hadn't touched in weeks.
And wrote the first sentence of something new.
The Kara Codex
"These tools were never made for empire.They were made for survival.
If you use them for control,you will find nothing but resistance."
In a tower far away, men in suits watched Yusuf's fake prototype fail.
One of them frowned.
— "They're smarter than we thought."
Another nodded.
— "Then we move faster."
He placed his palm on a tablet screen showing Emir's face.
— "We take the story.Before he finishes writing it."