On the back, in handwritten ink: "Marcus + Elena. Quincy, 2077. Before the end."
The bunker wasn't pre-war military. It wasn't Institute. It was... wrong. Walls pulsed with organic circuitry. Terminals dripped condensation that tasted of ozone and grief. And at the center, suspended in a cradle of crackling blue light, was a Quantum Cognitive Anomaly—a sentient storm of ones and zeroes given form by a single, tortured consciousness.
The transfer worked. For eleven seconds. Then the bombs fell.