Lena’s hands trembled. She thought of the rubber duck icon. The duckling of light. The relentless focus on sound patterns, harmonic scales, the way the symbols had always felt slightly vocal .

One square left. The center square. The duck icon.

Her curiosity, a feral cat that had gotten her into trouble more than once, clawed its way to the surface.

A simple interface appeared. A pond. A duckling made of light. And a stream of symbols flowing past—the same symbols from the grid.

The mallard waddled back into the pond and vanished beneath the surface.