The corridor narrowed as Ethan and Leanna moved deeper into the undercity facility. The walls here were older,raw steel layered with patches of concrete, cables exposed like veins beneath skin. This was the spine of the structure, the place where Korrin had built his command center atop the bones of Ethan’s original designs.Neither of them spoke,they walked in sync, footsteps light, controlled. The system guided them, but Ethan no longer trusted it blindly,he read the rhythm of the lights, the faint tremor in the floor, the pauses between mechanical breaths. Every signal told a story.“He’s close,” Leanna said at last, her voice low.Ethan nodded. “And nervous.”Ahead, a junction split into three paths. The center corridor glowed faintly blue, its air humming with active defenses,the left was dark. The right pulsed with intermittent red light.Leanna studied them. “He wants us to choose the center.”“Which means we don’t,” Ethan replied.They turned leftAs soon as they stepped into

The sealing of the chamber was not loud.That was the first thing Ethan noticed.No thunderous blast doors,no dramatic alarms,just a deep, final click that echoed through the circular room like a period at the end of a sentence,final,certain,unforgiving.The column of light at the center of the chamber brightened, shifting from a calm blue to a sharp, blinding white,streams of data spiraled upward, faster now, aggressive like a living thing that had sensed prey.Leanna tightened her grip on Ethan’s hand.“Air pressure just changed,” she said quietly.Ethan nodded. “He’s isolating the environment,he doesn’t want interference.”“Or witnesses,” she added.The voice came again, closer this time,not echoing from the walls, but vibrating through the floor, the light, even their bones.“You should feel honored,” Korrin said. “Very few people ever see the co

Morning settled over Braxton City like a cautious guest,not bold,not celebratory,careful.From the balcony, Ethan watched the streets below fill slowly,vendors reopening stalls, emergency drones lifting off, engineers climbing scaffolds along wounded towers. Life resumed in pieces, uneven and fragile, but unmistakably alive.Behind him, the balcony doors slid open.Leanna stepped out, carrying two cups of steaming coffee. She handed one to him without a word.He accepted it, fingers brushing hers.“Did you sleep?” she asked.Ethan let out a quiet breath. “A little. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the core shutting down again.”She leaned against the railing beside him. “That’s normal. You ended something that thought it was eternal.”“I keep wondering,” he said, voice low, “if we missed something,some hidden thread Korrin left behind.”Leanna studied his face carefully. “You’re not wrong to worry. People like him never put all their faith in one ending.”As if summoned by the thoug

Morning came with noise.Not the sharp alarms of crisis, but the layered sounds of a city trying to decide what it wanted to be,voices echoed through streets and plazas,public screens flickered with debates instead of directives. Some praised Ethan as a liberator,others accused him of destroying stability without offering a clear replacement.Braxton City was thinking out loud.Ethan stood in a temporary command room,one that deliberately lacked the cold grandeur of the old control centers,no towering screens,no hidden panels,just glass walls, open doors, and people walking freely in and out.“Transparency isn’t just a principle,” Clara said, standing beside him as they watched a live feed of a town hall forming in the western district. “It’s a risk.”“I know,” Ethan replied. “That’s why it matters.”Clara hesitated, then lowered her voice. “We intercepted chatter overnight,encrypted channels,not korrin-level infrastructure, but organized.”Ethan’s gaze sharpened. “Supporters?”“Belie

The morning after the elections were formally announced, Braxton City did not wake all at once.It stirred.Lights flickered on unevenly across districts,transit rails hummed in short, hesitant bursts,the city felt like a creature half-asleep, uncertain whether it was safe to rise or wiser to pretend it was still dreaming. For the first time in years, there was no single directive telling everyone where to go, how to move, what to trust.Ethan noticed it from the tower balcony as dawn bled slowly into the sky.“This is the quiet before the argument,” he said.Leanna stood beside him, arms folded, eyes scanning the city below. “No,” she replied softly. “This is the argument,just without words.By midmorning, the argument had found its voice.In the western industrial district, a self-organized council dissolved after only two hours when accusations of favoritism erupted,someone threw a chair,someone else livestreamed it. The footage spread faster than any official statement ever had.In