CHAPTER XXX - The First Signal From Silence

The world that David and Elara had known no longer existed.

Their cities had vanished.

Their languages had faded.

Their nations, cultures, histories, and names had long since dissolved into the immeasurable distances of time.

Even the Delta Complex, once the final refuge of human knowledge, no longer remained as anything recognizable. Its corridors had collapsed beneath geological pressure. Its reactors had fallen silent ages earlier. Entire sectors now existed only as fragmented cavities buried beneath mountains of stone, mineral growth, and the slow movement of a living planet reclaiming itself.