Eli did not hit the ground, He passed through it.The sensation wasn’t falling anymore, it was being peeled apart layer by layer, like gravity had turned sideways and begun unthreading him.Sound stretched. Light smeared. His thoughts lagged behind his awareness, as if his mind had to sprint to catch up with where his body had already gone.Then, impact. Not physical. Conceptual. Eli slammed into presence. The darkness beneath the white space wasn’t empty.It was crowded. Dense. Pressurized with stored intention, half-formed memories, aborted directives. The air, if it could be called air, vibrated with suppressed signals trying not to scream.He landed on one knee, palm pressed to something cold and smooth. Stone? No. Data pretending to be stone. He lifted his head slowly.The place around him resembled a cathedral built from shadows, vast arches disappearing upward into nothing, the floor etched with symbols that pulsed faintly as he breathed.Each symbol rearranged itself when he l

The call came through without priority flags. That should have been the warning. Kay was still scanning feeds when her console chimed, soft, almost polite.No alarms. No red banners. Just a single incoming request routed through three indecisive subsystems. She frowned. “That’s… odd.”Eli looked up from the bench where he sat, elbows on knees, head bowed as the city’s low hum pressed against his skull. “What is it?”“A medical dispatch,” Kay said slowly. “But the system didn’t auto-route it. It… deferred.”“Deferred to who?”“To the nearest responders,” she said. “Plural.”Eli stood. “Show me.”The feed opened onto a street-level camera on the West Side. A small crowd had gathered around a man lying on the pavement near a bus stop.Mid-fifties. Pale. One hand clutching his chest. His other arm outstretched, trembling. Two ambulances were parked on opposite sides of the street.Neither moved. Kay’s breath caught. “Why aren’t they”The audio feed crackled to life. A paramedic’s voice ca

The city didn’t sleep that night. It paused. It reconsidered. It replayed. Eli felt it in his bones as he stood on the roof of the Network center, Chicago stretching out beneath him in a restless grid of light.Sirens stitched red and blue through the streets. Drones hovered uncertainly, holding position instead of patrolling. Traffic lights blinked amber longer than necessary, as if asking permission.The city was afraid to be wrong again. Kay joined him, the wind tugging at her jacket. “Emergency response stabilized,” she said quietly. “Casualties from the bridge blast are alive. Injured, but alive.”Eli let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “Good.”“But,” Kay continued, “public trust just took a hit. Bad one.”“I know,” Eli said. “Because hesitation looks like weakness when someone gets hurt.”Kay leaned on the railing beside him. “We gave the city a conscience. Now people are testing whether it has a spine.”Eli watched a drone drift sideways, then correct itself aft

The first broadcast hijacked every screen at once. Not violently. Not with alarms. With a question.Across Chicago, phones, billboards, transit displays, home assistants, the same prompt appeared in plain, unadorned text: WHO SHOULD DECIDE HOW THIS CITY ACTS WHEN WE DISAGREE?There was no logo. No authority stamp. No instruction on how to answer. Just the question.Eli watched it unfold from the relay chamber as if observing a controlled burn that might suddenly leap the line.Kay stood beside him, scrolling through live feeds, news networks scrambling, anchors stalling, experts arguing over nothing concrete. “They don’t know who to blame yet,” she said.Eli didn’t look away from the city map. “They will.”The response curve surged in uneven waves. Neighborhoods lit up with discussion clusters, some immediate, some hesitant.Cafés turned into debate halls. Trains slowed not because of malfunction, but because conductors were talking to passengers instead of issuing commands.“Traffic

The city did not speak for eight seconds. In those eight seconds, Chicago held its breath. Sirens stalled mid-wail. Screens froze on half-formed outrage.People waited, some for reassurance, some for permission, some for something to blame. Eli felt the silence like pressure behind his eyes. “That’s too long,” Vaughn said quietly.Eli didn’t answer. He was listening, not to sound, but to pattern. The city wasn’t stalled. It was reconfiguring. The question still hung across every interface: HOW SHOULD I CHANGE?No options. No default. No authority tag. Kay’s voice came through the wall speaker, strained. “The response rate is unlike anything we’ve seen. Not just volume, depth. People are… explaining themselves.”Eli closed his eyes. Explanations meant responsibility. Responsibility meant pain. Vaughn folded her arms. “You see what you’ve done. You’ve turned a tragedy into a referendum.”“No,” Eli said softly. “It was always one. You just kept it implicit.”Outside the room, the feeds s