Across the city, every digital billboard — and there were thousands — went blank at the same time.
After a protracted period of nonactivity, the screens all lit up at the same time with white text on a black background.
The font was Inconsolata.
#HasCassieSurfacedYet? flashed on every billboard.
The hashtag remained on-screen for ten seconds, then flickered and vanished, replaced by: Not yet.
Ten more seconds. Flicker.
Soon.
Ten final, excruciating seconds. And then … a set of coordinates. Longitude and latitude.
It repeated every minute for almost half an hour before techs were able to lock down security and purge Cassie’s botnet from the billboards’ network.
By then, damn near everyone in the city had seen it, and it had gone viral across the country.