The newsroom was always louder on Mondays.Printers coughed ink, interns shouted over broken headsets, and somewhere in the haze of caffeine and sweat, Gerald Waylen, senior editor of The Daily Pulse, tried to write an editorial about quitting smoking while a cigarette burned quietly between his fingers.
The irony wasn't lost on him.
"Smoking kills," he muttered under his breath, typing the words. "It ruins your lungs, your looks, and your love life."
He took a drag.
"But god, it buys you five minutes of peace."
The ashtray beside him overflowed like a dying volcano. He was fifty-six, divorced twice, and had once won an award for investigative journalism in 2041 — the same year his hairline surrendered.
He was halfway through the line "Let this be the year you breathe clean air again" when the office door slammed open.
"Chief! You've got to see this!"
The intern — a nervous kid named Paul — held a thin holosheet, glowing faintly blue. The headline on top read:
"Military Blackout in Nevada Desert — Possible Biohazard?"
Gerald squinted, puffed out smoke. "Biohazard? They still use that word? That's adorable."
Paul swallowed hard. "Sir, the file's from a military relay. Classified. Someone leaked this to all major outlets, but they're trying to bury it fast."
Gerald leaned forward, reading the sublines as the holographic text shifted:
'Unknown energy surge detected. All personnel presumed KIA. Atmospheric radiation spike localized to 300 meters. Civilian casualties: zero. Unidentified female sighted.'
He exhaled smoke through his nose. "Unidentified female. Always how it starts, huh? That's how you sell a conspiracy."
"Sir, there's more," Paul said, flicking to the next image.
The screen changed — grainy satellite photos. The first showed a massive crater glowing faintly blue. The second… showed a silhouette. A woman. Standing amidst the melted ruins. Her eyes shimmered faintly, like glass catching sunlight.
Gerald froze mid-drag.
"Enhance that," he muttered.
Paul zoomed in. The figure's skin shimmered metallic; veins glowed under the surface like circuitry. Behind her, twisted tanks melted like candles.
"Jesus Christ," Gerald whispered. "Is that… a person?"
"Military sources call her 'N-0R0,' but one report spells it as Nero."
Gerald's cigarette trembled slightly between his fingers. He stubbed it out hard and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling tiles.
"A walking nuclear event," he said quietly. "Of course it's a woman. The world's going to end in high heels and eyeliner."
Paul looked uneasy. "Should we… print it?"
Gerald hesitated. His journalist's instinct screamed yes, but something colder stirred in his gut — the same feeling he had the night he exposed the Synthetic Organ Trafficking scandal ten years ago. Back then, three reporters disappeared within a week.
"They'll shut us down if we go live with this," he said finally.
"Then what do we do?"
Gerald took another cigarette, rolled it between his fingers, unlit this time. He looked at the image again — that girl in the desert, glowing faintly like something divine or radioactive.
"We write carefully," he said. "We call it fiction, an editorial… a theory. The world loves theories more than truth."
Paul frowned. "So we disguise it?"
"Exactly. 'Anonymous reports suggest a rogue experiment gone wrong.' That's our angle. Let the readers connect the dots. Let the agencies choke on denial."
He lit the cigarette, took a long drag, and exhaled slowly. The smoke curled upward like a ghost of habit.
"Sir," Paul said softly, "you should stop smoking. You literally just wrote a column about it."
Gerald smiled faintly, eyes tired but sharp.
"Kid," he said, blowing another plume toward the hologram, "if the world's making radioactive women who melt tanks, I think lung cancer's the least of my problems."
Outside, thunder rolled—though the sky was clear. Somewhere far away, the same light that had once glowed in the desert flickered faintly again.
The world didn't know it yet, but Nero's existence had just leaked into public consciousness. And in smoky offices like Gerald's, the myth had begun to take shape.
Headline draft, saved but unpublished:"The Girl Who Survived Radiation — And Became It."
Gerald stubbed out his cigarette, saving the file with a weary sigh.He didn't know it yet, but that small act — that single, cynical article — would be the first domino in humanity's next panic.
erald Waylen had spent thirty years chasing stories that didn't want to be found.He'd followed politicians into brothels, priests into casinos, and billionaires into jungles. But nothing compared to the ghost he was chasing now—a name that had appeared out of nowhere: Nero Nevada.
The name surfaced once in a scrubbed military report. Then vanished.Only a single image remained—grainy, corrupted, showing a woman standing in smoke, eyes like burnt glass.Gerald printed it anyway. He liked having paper proof of impossible things.
Tonight, he was in his dim little office again, cigarette wedged in his teeth, trying to find something—anything—about her.Every normal database had been wiped clean. Even the press archives returned nothing but "Access Denied."
So he went where logic ended: the dark web.
Gerald was too old for its neon paranoia, but he knew how to dig. He poured a whiskey, cracked his knuckles, and logged into a forgotten server through three VPN tunnels. The screen blinked black, then filled with scrolling green text.He searched one word:
"Nero."
Then:
"Nevada incident."
Dozens of threads appeared instantly, written in code, slang, and madness.Most were garbage—deep-fake theories, nuclear disaster hoaxes, cryptid fanart.But the deeper he scrolled, the stranger it became.
A recurring name kept appearing: "Mrs. Hudzilla."
At first, Gerald thought it was a typo. Then he saw how often it showed up—everywhere, always linked to radiation, explosions, power plants, and some woman with "light in her eyes."
He clicked one thread titled:
"The Glowing Woman of Nevada Desert (Real Sightings)"
The first post was simple text:
"She walks where nothing grows. The ground steams behind her. She breathes poison and turns it to gold."
Gerald frowned. Below it were comments, hundreds of them—some serious, others deranged:
@RedFlesh77: Government nuked the area but she lived.@UraniumSaint: Not human. Radiation-made angel.@RadicalGod: She's Mrs. Hudzilla—the end of smoke, the bride of the apocalypse.
Another thread contained pixelated sketches: a tall woman surrounded by fire, her skin faintly glowing through cracks. Someone had drawn her wearing what looked like a broken crown—others said it was a headset, others said a halo.
@NukeChild: Mrs. Hudzilla ate the bomb.@PowerPlantPat: She doesn't kill—she cleans. She's radiation's cure.@NoSignal: My cousin works in the base. Said they kept her alive in glass. Said she talks in two voices.
Gerald's cigarette burned halfway down before he noticed.Two voices?
He opened another post that linked to a heavily compressed video. The file name was gibberish.The screen flickered. Then—footage from a desert security cam.The quality was awful, but a shape moved—human, female, glowing faint blue like underwater light. The sand behind her rose in waves of heat.
Then the video glitched and repeated: she turns, looks at the camera, and the feed cuts out.
The timestamp was from five days ago.
Gerald exhaled sharply. He'd seen doctored clips before—this didn't look like one.The shadows, the dust, the movement—too natural. But what the hell was she doing there? And why was her name spreading through conspiracy sites?
He opened a chat room attached to the thread. Messages were flying by too fast to read.Everyone arguing who she was.
"Radioactive demon.""Government experiment.""Angel of decay.""Weapon that feels."
Gerald typed for the first time:
"Any proof she's real?"
Someone replied instantly:
"Proof? You think she's not? Then explain why the whole Nevada perimeter's on military lockdown. Explain the glowing birds last week. Explain why power grids died for twelve minutes."
Gerald didn't respond. He leaned back, stared at the old ceiling fan spinning lazily, and muttered, "Mrs. Hudzilla, huh?"
He scribbled the name on his notepad and circled it twice.It was ridiculous. But ridiculous things often hid the truth.
He didn't know who this "Mrs. Hudzilla" really was.The dark web didn't know either—they only saw fragments: a woman of radiation, a goddess of decay, a ghost in burned glass.Each rumor was a reflection of fear, not fact.
But there was one pattern he couldn't ignore—every thread that mentioned her ended with the same phrase:
"The End of Earth has begun."
Gerald smirked, closed the lid of his laptop, and whispered,
"If you're real, Mrs. Hudzilla… I'll find you."
Behind him, his monitor flickered one last time.The video he'd just closed played itself again—except this time, as the glowing woman turned her head, something else flashed across the screen:a faint digital voice, glitched and layered.
"He's watching."
Gerald froze.Then the screen went dark.
Gerald Waylen stared at the dark screen long after the glow had vanished.The faint hum of his computer fans filled the silence, like the last breath of something dying.He rubbed his face and muttered, "The End of Earth, huh? Fine. Let's see who's listening."
He took another drag from his cigarette. The smoke curled upward, brushing against yellowed newspaper clippings pinned to the wall — headlines from his glory days:
"Journalist Exposes Nuclear Cover-Up.""Tobacco Tycoon Scandal Unfolds.""War Crimes Leak Sparks Inquiry."
That was years ago.Now, he was a relic.Nobody wanted paper and ink anymore; they wanted clickbait, filters, and lies dressed in colors.But Gerald knew the rhythm of a story that wasn't finished — and the woman on that screen was the kind that rewrote history.
He turned the monitor back on, reopened the dark web threads, and copied everything: screenshots, timestamps, forum posts, and the blurry, flickering video of the glowing woman. He even included snippets from a few military communication leaks — ones that mentioned "BioHazard 7-A" and "Desert Perimeter Breach."
It wasn't much, but it was enough to light a fire.
He poured himself another whiskey. The glass clinked against the desk."News is already bombarding the underground," he muttered, tapping the keys."So why not bring it to the surface?"
He smirked — it was the kind of chaos he lived for.
Gerald opened a ghost website he'd once built for whistleblowing — an old digital skeleton buried under layers of encryption and fake IPs.He'd used it years ago to leak oil company bribes; now, it would serve again.He typed the title:
"The Nevada Anomaly: Mrs. Hudzilla – Goddess, Weapon, or Cover-Up?"
Below it, he embedded the grainy video.Then he wrote the introduction, his words sharp and deliberate:
"A woman seen walking through irradiated sand. Military blackouts. Twelve-minute power failures. And a growing online cult calling her Mrs. Hudzilla.
What is the truth behind this myth? Why is the government wiping all related data?
If this reaches you, save it. Reupload it. Mirror it. Truth is contagious."
He paused. The last sentence hit him harder than he expected.Truth was contagious — but so was fear.
He hesitated for a moment, fingers hovering over the keyboard.He thought of his daughter, who didn't return his calls anymore. Of the friend who'd vanished after a classified report in Syria. Of the journalist he used to be — reckless, righteous, stupid.
Then he pressed Enter.
The upload bar filled slowly, pixel by pixel. When it reached 100%, the post blinked live on dozens of hidden channels, each one connected to bots that mirrored it onto fringe news aggregators, conspiracy blogs, and leaked science feeds. Within ten minutes, the article was everywhere and nowhere — exactly how Gerald wanted it.
By the time the clock struck midnight, The Nevada Anomaly had reached the front page of five underground subreddits, two local hacker forums, and an obscure Russian-language news outlet that translated it automatically.
The video started trending — people slowed it down, zoomed in, analyzed every flicker of light.Some claimed it was CGI, others insisted it was divine.Hashtags began to appear: #MrsHudzilla #DesertAngel #NeroProject #EndOfEarth
Gerald leaned back and watched it unfold with a half-smile. "You're out there now," he whispered to the woman in the video. "No more hiding."
But then something unexpected happened.
His screen froze.A line of code blinked across the top: "Unauthorized upload detected."
Gerald frowned. He hadn't seen that before. Then another window popped up — black background, white text, moving on its own.
WHO ARE YOU.WHY DID YOU UPLOAD THIS.DELETE THE FOOTAGE.
He tried to close it, but the system locked. The screen filled with static, then flickered into a single image — two glowing eyes, faint blue and pulsing like light through water.
For a moment, they stared at him.
Then a voice — metallic, layered, neither man nor woman — whispered through his speakers:
"You shouldn't have done that, Gerald Waylen."
He froze, blood running cold."Who—who the hell are you?"
The voice paused, as if smiling through data.
"You opened the surface. Now they will come for both of us."
Then the screen went black again.The cigarette fell from his hand and burned a small hole in the carpet.
Gerald stared at the dark monitor, pulse pounding. He knew the tone of a threat when he heard one — but this didn't sound like a threat from a person.It sounded like something inside the system was alive.
He poured another drink, hands trembling slightly."Mrs. Hudzilla," he muttered, "what the hell are you?"
erald Waylen had broken a thousand stories in his life, but none of them made his skin crawl like this one.His anonymous upload—The Nevada Anomaly—had gone live just thirty minutes ago. In that short time, his phone wouldn't stop vibrating, the analytics climbing faster than he could watch.Over half a million views.A million shares.Then, silence.
The vibration stopped mid-buzz. His Wi-Fi light died.His router went dark.And the monitor blinked black.
Gerald leaned forward, whispering, "What the hell…"
Then his speakers hissed.Static.And through the static, a sound that wasn't quite a voice — more like a whisper made of machinery.
"You shouldn't have done that."
Gerald froze, staring at the dead monitor."Who said that?" he muttered, scanning the shadows of his office.But there was no one. Only the faint smell of smoke from his old computer, and the hum of a dying fan.
"They are already coming," the voice said again — distant, layered, glitching like broken radio waves.
Then silence.
He stood there, pulse hammering, unsure if it was a hallucination or interference from his overloaded network. But before he could think it through, a deep, familiar sound broke the night: tires screeching.
He walked to the window, peered through the blinds — and felt his heart drop.Two matte-black SUVs had pulled up outside his building. Men in tactical armor poured out, faces hidden behind visors, rifles gleaming under the streetlights.
"Jesus Christ," he whispered, stumbling back. "Already?"
The sound of boots hit the stairs.He knew how these operations worked — no warning, no warrant, just containment.
Gerald grabbed his old satchel, stuffed in his hard drives, and ripped out the laptop cables.If they wanted his data, they'd get ashes.
He slammed a flash drive into the port — a program he'd once used in Afghanistan to erase GPS metadata from photos.He hit EXECUTE.
The laptop screen flickered:
PURGING DEVICE LOCATION... 22%... 45%... 68%...
Outside, someone shouted,
"Federal security! Step away from the workstation!"
His eyes darted to the progress bar.84%… 91%… 99%…
He yanked the plug just as the front door exploded inward — splinters of wood flying across the room.Red dots painted his chest, his walls, his whiskey bottle.
"Hands in the air!"
Gerald threw the burning cigarette into his overflowing ashtray — flames jumped up — then kicked the desk hard, toppling it.The agents shouted. He bolted for the back door, his satchel slamming against his ribs.
He heard boots behind him, the clatter of equipment, the snap of a stun gun."Stop!"
He didn't stop. He'd been in war zones. He knew the sound of soldiers who weren't trying to arrest — but to erase.
He burst into the alley behind the office just as the rain started. It came down in sheets, the neon reflections of their vehicles bleeding across the pavement.
"Subject is on foot! West alley!"
Bullets tore through trash cans and walls. Sparks flew past his face.Gerald ducked and ran, the heavy smell of ozone filling the air.The pain in his knee screamed with every step, but he kept going — turning left, then right, weaving through puddles and rusted fences.
He glanced back once — and saw one of the soldiers pointing not a gun, but something else — a small black scanner pulsing with blue light.It beeped.
"Signal confirmed! He's got the original device!"
They weren't after him, he realized.They were after the data.
He turned another corner and spotted an old service tunnel entrance near the abandoned subway line. Without thinking, he pried it open and slid down into the dark.
He landed hard in the muck below, gasping for air, listening to the muffled shouts echoing from above.Then — nothing. Just the distant dripping of water.
He took out his phone. No signal. Just a faint glow from the cracked screen, showing one thing before it blinked out:
Views: 1,873,420. Shares: 980,000. Mirrors: 213.
He grinned through his exhaustion."They can't catch all of it," he muttered. "It's already loose."
A faint noise rippled through the tunnel — static, again.His broken phone speaker crackled one last time.
"Gerald Waylen…"
He froze. "Who is this?"
The voice came through clearer this time, not human, not digital — something between the two.
"You wanted the truth. You gave it light. Now watch how fast the world burns."
The phone sparked, short-circuited, and died.
Gerald stared into the dark for a long moment, heart pounding.He didn't understand any of it — who the glowing woman was, what the voice meant, or why the military cared this much.All he knew was that he'd just torn open something the government had buried deep — and whatever it was, it was waking up.
He slung the satchel tighter over his shoulder and muttered,
"Fine. Let's see what burns first."
Then he started walking, deeper into the tunnels — unaware that, miles away, in a cold desert bunker, a woman with glowing veins had just whispered the same words in her sleep.
Rain turned the alley into a sheet of mercury. Gerald's lungs burned; every breath tasted of iron and smoke. He didn't know how long he'd been running—ten minutes? twenty?—but the echo of boots had finally faded.
He stumbled into the skeleton of an old financial tower, one of the many glass monoliths left to rot after the corporate exodus. Only the elevator shaft still worked, powered by some backup grid that flickered like a dying heart.
He pressed the button marked 46, the highest still accessible, and slumped against the wall as the doors closed. His reflection in the mirrored panel looked ghost-white, rainwater running down like tears.
"You shouldn't have published it."
The voice came from nowhere—and everywhere.
Gerald's head snapped up. The elevator light blinked red. The floor numbers froze at 32, then started climbing again, faster this time, though he hadn't touched a thing.
"Who's there?"
No answer. Only the hum of the machinery deepening into a growl. When the doors opened at the top, a gust of freezing wind hit him, bringing the smell of ozone and scorched concrete.
He stepped out onto a ruined rooftop. Lightning split the clouds. Neon reflections from the lower city glowed like veins beneath the storm. And standing near the edge—half silhouette, half shadow—was her.
At first glance, she looked human. Then the light hit her skin.Lines of dim violet current ran beneath it, webbing across her face and neck, pulsing like circuitry. Her eyes shimmered with a glassy luminescence that wasn't entirely alive.
"Gerald Waylen," she said—calm, melodic, yet cold enough to freeze the blood in his throat.
He stammered, "How—how do you know my name?"
She tilted her head, like a curious predator. "You told the world what wasn't yours to tell."
A streak of lightning framed her face. Gerald saw her more clearly now: damp strands of silver-black hair stuck to her cheek; her clothes clung to her like liquid metal, every seam glowing faintly from within. She was soaked, yet untouched by the rain—as if the drops slid off an invisible barrier.
He backed away, hands trembling. "Listen, I—I didn't mean to expose anyone. It was just data—some kind of incident report. I didn't even know it was real!"
"You woke something sleeping," she said. "Now it's awake. Now I'm awake."
Her pupils constricted into fine slits of light. The air around her vibrated with a low, subsonic hum that made Gerald's teeth ache. The metal railing beside him began to twist and ripple, reacting to her presence.
Then, without warning, she moved. One blink, and she was inches from his face—too fast for his brain to register. Her hand clamped around his throat, effortless, gentle in appearance but unbreakable in strength.
"Wait—please—" he gasped.
She didn't tighten the grip, just lifted him off the ground as if he weighed nothing. The wind whipped around them; rain exploded against her arm and evaporated in sparks.
"You broadcasted radiation signatures, coordinates, names," she said, eyes glowing brighter. "You invited them to find me. To find her."
"Her?" he choked out.
A flicker of something human passed through those eyes—confusion, pain, maybe memory. For a second, the voice changed; a different tone slipped through the distortion. Softer. Frightened.
"Dr… stop… please…"
Gerald caught the shift. The same mouth, different voice."There's someone else in there," he wheezed.
Her grip faltered slightly. "Silence."
But now he could see the battle inside her—the way her expression twitched, like two faces trying to share the same skull.
"Nero," she whispered. Then her tone hardened again. "She is irrelevant."
She turned toward the edge of the building, still holding him by the collar. Below, forty-six stories of empty air waited. The city lights stretched endlessly, blurred by storm and distance.
"You opened the gate," she murmured, eyes fixed on the horizon. "You think words are harmless. They aren't. Every word is a weapon when the world listens."
Gerald's boots kicked at the air, his vision tunneling from fear and lack of oxygen. "I—I can help! I can hide you—bury the story—just let me—"
For the first time, she smiled. It wasn't kind.
"The world doesn't bury. It consumes."
She leaned forward, pushing him just far enough that his toes no longer touched the concrete. The wind screamed between them. Then—suddenly—her hand released.
He fell——half a meter.
Her other hand caught him by the wrist.
Gerald dangled there, soaked, coughing, terrified. She looked down at him, eyes dimming from violet to pale blue.
"Tell the world," she said softly, "that evolution doesn't need permission."
Then she pulled him back up, set him down, and vanished in a burst of static—disintegrating into motes of violet light that drifted off into the rain.
Gerald collapsed, gasping, staring at the spot where she'd stood.
Somewhere inside that fading glow, two voices whispered at once—one mechanical, one human:
"Dr. Unown.""Nero."
He didn't know which name frightened him more.
Wind keened through the open rooftop like a blade dragged across steel. Gerald still trembled on the wet concrete, coughing, rain streaming down his hair and face. His pulse thudded against his throat so loud he could hardly hear the storm.
"I-I swear I won't tell anyone," he said, his voice cracking between terror and disbelief. "Please, whatever you are—"
A soft chime interrupted him.It came from inside her—the strange woman who wasn't only human. The glow in her skin pulsed sharply, shifting from violet to a cold emerald hue.
"Incoming transmission: Priority Omega."
The words weren't spoken aloud; they vibrated through the air, through Gerald's ribs, through the bones of the tower itself.
Dr. Unown froze. His borrowed body—Nero's body—stiffened, eyes rolling back for a second as data flickered across the thin membrane of light coating her pupils. A metallic whisper crawled through her skull: coordinates, a pulse-wave signature, and a single phrase.
"Phase Two initiated. Collect the Catalyst."
The voice wasn't his. It was another intelligence. One he hadn't expected.
For the first time, Dr. Unown looked unsettled.
Gerald saw it—the tiny twitch of confusion in that perfect, machine-precise face. "What does that mean?" he asked, shivering. "What catalyst?"
She didn't answer. Her gaze shifted toward the black clouds churning above them. Every raindrop seemed to slow in midair for half a heartbeat, like reality itself was buffering.
"You shouldn't have existed," she murmured—not to him, but to something unseen. "You weren't in the equations."
Lightning forked again, illuminating the rooftop in raw white. In that instant Gerald saw her expression split—Dr. Unown's cold precision warring with Nero's buried panic.
"Dr… what's happening?""Silence, Nero. Something found us."
Gerald crawled backward on his hands. "I don't understand any of this. You saved me, didn't you? You—"
Dr. Unown turned back toward him. The momentary confusion was gone. His eyes steadied into dull, unfeeling light.
"The message is proof they've located the link," he said. "Which means they traced you."
"Me? I—I didn't send anything! I just wrote a stupid report!"
"Your device. Your signal. You carried the coordinates to them."
She approached with measured steps, each one echoing heavier than the thunder overhead. The wind pushed against her coat, making it flap like torn metal wings.
Gerald's panic rose. "Wait, you said evolution doesn't need permission! You—you said—"
Dr. Unown smiled faintly. "Evolution also doesn't leave witnesses."
Before he could move, her hand clamped around his chest and lifted him again—effortless, clinical. She dragged him toward the ledge. The storm screamed below, a bottomless neon abyss stretching beneath the tower.
"Please," he gasped, "there's still people who can help you—Nero, whoever she is, she's fighting inside you, I saw it—"
Her voice softened unexpectedly. "She fights. Yes. But you mistake compassion for cure."
For one fleeting instant, Nero's voice burst through the distortion—raw, desperate:
"Don't do this! He's innocent!"
The glow faltered; her hands trembled. Gerald felt the grip loosen—just enough for a flicker of hope to ignite. But then the emerald light surged brighter.
Dr. Unown's tone became absolute. "Hope is an outdated organ."
The rain paused. The wind held its breath. And with a motion smoother than thought, she released him.
Gerald fell.
The scream never fully left his throat before gravity claimed him. Forty-six stories blurred past—a tunnel of neon reflections and shattered glass. His body hit the pavement with a sound that vanished beneath the roar of thunder.
Dr. Unown stood still at the edge, eyes blank, watching the distant impact light up like a camera flash.
Then the chime returned.
"Transmission complete. Authorization accepted. Catalyst secured."
He frowned. "Secured?"
A hollow echo ran through his systems—coordinates replaced by a new code he didn't recognize. It crawled across his internal interface like a virus, rewriting commands faster than he could process.
Inside the haze of his consciousness, Nero screamed.
"What did you download, Doctor?"
Dr. Unown didn't answer. His gaze lifted toward the skyline. Somewhere, beneath the storm, something vast stirred—like an eye opening beneath the city.
"It seems," he whispered, "we were both experiments."
The rooftop cracked with one final strike of lightning, and he vanished again—disassembling into a cloud of photonic dust that drifted off into the storm.
Below, sirens began to wail.
Gerald Waylen's phone, cracked beside his body, blinked once. The unsent draft of his last message glowed faintly on the shattered screen:
"Breaking story: Mrs. Hudzilla may be real."
Then the screen went dark.