"Not physically," Kaelen said, his mind racing. "Quantumly. You said the unlocker doesn't match the core's signature. What if we don't match it? What if we overwrite it?"

It wasn't pain. Pain was a small, local thing. This was infinity forced through a pinhole. He felt the birth of stars in the LMC, the death of a civilization on a world orbiting Betelgeuse, the long, lonely song of a black hole devouring a sun. The alien code howled, but it was no longer a pathogen—it was a language . He understood it for a fraction of a second. It wasn't a lock. It was a warning.

"S3," he said, sitting upright. "Where is the original master key stored?"

"In the core memory of the Array. Physically inaccessible without breaching the containment vessel."