“That’s not a circuit,” she muttered. “That’s a key.”

Mira stared at the blinking cursor on her terminal. The words “AUTODESK INC. EAGLE ONLINE” glowed in the top-left corner, connected to a server that, by all official records, no longer existed.

No answer, of course. But then she noticed something new. The schematic began to redraw itself—slowly, deliberately. The rings tightened. A new trace branched out, forming a single word in ASCII art: