Braxton City had never been quieter,rhe streets lay under a steady rain, the kind that blurred the edges of reality and reflection alike. The city lights shimmered in puddles, casting distorted images that made every shadow look larger than it was,from the tower, Ethan watched the rain hit the streets, counting every second that passed,every second mattered now.Leanna was out there somewhere,somewhere in the undercity,and Korrin,Korrin was already moving pieces around them, unseen, unheard, unstoppable,unless Ethan and Leanna could anticipate him.Ethan paced the observation deck,his mind raced,every scenario he had considered in his worst nightmares now seemed tame compared to what Korrin could be planning.A subtle spike in the city’s energy grid caught his eye,a series of minor, yet precise, fluctuations,nothing catastrophic yet, but unusual enough to indicate remote manipulation.“Leanna,” he murmured, reaching for his comms,but then he remembered,she was off-grid,no direct link,

The stabilizer core was never meant to be entered by hand.Ethan felt that truth the moment he crossed the threshold into the chamber,the air changed,thicker, hotter, vibrating with a low, constant hum that rattled his bones. Massive pillars of reinforced alloy rose from the floor to the ceiling, each wrapped in coils of glowing conduits that pulsed unevenly, like failing veins.Warning lights flashed red across every surface.Structural failure imminent.Ethan ignored the alert and ran.Every second mattered now,not just for him,but for the thousands of lives stacked above this fragile skeleton of a city.The core chamber opened into a wide circular space, with a central platform suspended over a deep shaft,energy surged upward from below, raw and unstable. The stabilizers,three of them were meant to balance that energy, distributing it evenly through the undercity.Two were offline,the third flickered dangerously.“Of course,” Ethan muttered. “He planned this.”Korrin hadn’t simply

Ethan woke to light.Not the harsh glare of an operating room, but something softer filtered through tall windows, pale and distant, like the city itself was watching him from far away.For a moment, he didn’t know where he was,then the pain arrived.It rolled through his body in slow waves, deep and aching, settling into his chest, his arms, his head. He hissed and tried to move, only to feel the resistance of medical restraints and the steady pull of monitoring lines.“Easy,” a familiar voice said.Leanna.He turned his head slightly and saw her sitting beside the bed, hair pulled back loosely, eyes shadowed with exhaustion,relief washed over him stronger than any sedative.“You stayed,” he murmured.She let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a sob. “I wasn’t going anywhere.”Ethan stared at the ceiling for a while, listening to the quiet hum of the machines.“Did we…?” he asked.“Yes,” Leanna said gently. “The stabilizer held,the undercity’s safe.”A faint smile tugged at his

The first protest began quietly.No chants,no banners,just people standing still in the central transit plaza, refusing to move when the evening commute surged around them. At first, security assumed it was a glitch,another delayed train, another routine disruption.Then more people stopped,and more.Within minutes, the plaza slowed to a crawl.From the upper floors of Braxton Tower, Ethan watched the feeds in silence,live aerial footage showed clusters forming across the city,small at first, scattered, almost accidental.Leanna stood beside him, arms crossed, eyes sharp.“They’re not organized,” she said. “That’s what scares the council.”Ethan nodded. “You can’t negotiate with uncertainty.”As if summoned by the thought, a citywide alert chimed.UNAUTHORIZED GATHERINGS DETECTED. PLEASE DISPERSE.No one did.Instead, someone projected a single phrase onto the side of a transit wallWHO SAVED US?Korrin slammed his hand onto the council table.“This was not in the models,” he snapped.

The lockdown began with a sound like the city drawing a blade.Across Braxton Tower, reinforced shutters slid into place with a deep metallic roar,glass panels polarized instantly, turning from transparent to opaque black,elevators froze between floors,emergency lights snapped on, bathing corridors in sharp white and red.Outside, armored transports hovered low, their engines humming with controlled menace.Ethan felt the shift before any alert reached him.“The tower’s sealing,” he said calmly, even as his pulse quickened. “He’s done pretending.”Around him, the crowd reacted in waves,fear, anger, confusion. Some people backed away instinctively. Others stepped closer, forming a loose barrier between Ethan and the advancing security lines.Leanna’s voice cut through his earpiece, sharp with urgency.“Ethan, Phase D is active,this isn’t crowd control,this is extraction. They’re isolating you.”“I figured,” he replied. “Where are you?”“Sublevel three,” she said. “I’m locked out of mos