The tunnels beneath the city smelled of oil, rust, and something older—fear that had soaked into the concrete long before Cain Global learned how to weaponize it.Luther moved fast, Celeste close behind him, Selene guiding them through a flickering map projected from her wrist device. Lydia supported Marcus, whose weight slowed them but didn’t stop them. The gunfire above faded, replaced by distant sirens and the low hum of infrastructure pushed past its limits.“They’ll seal these tunnels once they realize we’re gone,” Selene said. “Cain Global owns half the underground grid.”“Then we don’t let them realize,” Luther replied.Celeste shot him a look. “You already sent Adrian a truth-bomb that could tear the city apart.”“Yes,” Luther said evenly. “But that doesn’t mean Victor understands what just happened.”They reached a junction where the tunnel split three ways. Selene slowed, frowning at her map.“That’s not right.”Luther stopped. “What?”“There should be Guardian surveillance

The room burned.Not with fire, but with energy—raw, unstable Echelon surges cracking through the concrete like invisible lightning. The air vibrated so violently that Luther could feel it in his teeth.Adrian stood at the center of it.His breath came in sharp, uneven bursts, eyes glowing with a sickly blue light that pulsed in time with the warped reality around him. Cain Guardians formed a loose perimeter behind him, weapons raised but uncertain. None of them dared fire.Across the room, the Axiom operatives recalibrated instantly, sliding into new positions like pieces on a board that had just flipped upside down.“Stand down,” one of them ordered, voice flat. “Subject Adrian Cain is unstable.”Adrian laughed—short, sharp, almost hysterical. “Unstable?” He looked down at his shaking hands. “You think this is unstable? You should’ve seen my life five minutes ago.”Luther pushed himself up on one elbow. His head throbbed, the echo of the dampener still buzzing through his skull like

The city was already listening when Celeste decided she would speak.Cain Global had trained people to watch screens the way past generations watched the sky, always waiting for warnings, for orders, for reassurance that someone powerful was in control. Every public display pulsed with Victor Cain’s emblem, every channel replaying variations of the same message: stability, safety, and sacrifice.Celeste sat in the center of a stripped-down control room beneath an abandoned transit hub, her injured shoulder bound tight, her face pale but steady. A single camera stared back at her. No filters, no edits just truth—whatever that meant in a world built on lies.“You don’t have to do this,” Luther said for the third time.He stood just behind her, arms crossed, jaw tense. Since pulling her from the rubble, he hadn’t let her out of his sight. Every time she shifted, he noticed. Every wince of pain felt like a personal failure.Celeste looked up at him. “I do.”Selene adjusted the signal rout

The city no longer slept.Even in the quiet pockets between riots, there was a sound beneath everything, generators running overtime, drones slicing the air, people whispering in stairwells instead of resting and everybody was afraid It pressed into the lungs. It lingered on the skin.Luther stood on the roof of the abandoned hospital, watching the dampener tower dominate the skyline like a blade driven into the city’s spine. Blue-white energy pulsed along its surface like a wave, each one making the Echelon Gene in his blood tighten painfully, as if warning him of something worse than suppression.Behind him, Selene argued quietly with Marcus over resource allocation. Celeste sat on a crate near the exit door, scrolling through civilian feeds on injury counts, disappearances, and districts going dark.Luther felt useless standing still then his comm vibrated once. A private channel, old and almost forgotten.It was Adrian.Luther stiffened but didn’t answer immediately. He looked at

The city felt wrong before the first shot was fired.Luther noticed it the moment they surfaced.The streets above the transit grid were too quiet for a city three hours from collapse. No shouting, no sirens. Even the drones seemed to move differently, slower, deliberate, as if following a script that had already been written.Selene frowned at her tablet. “I’m not seeing Guardian patrols.”Marcus adjusted his grip on his weapon. “That’s not comforting.”Celeste scanned the rooftops. “Neither is this silence.”They moved cautiously, sticking to shadowed corridors between buildings. The target was a relay node tied directly into Phase Three’s architecture, old infrastructure Victor had repurposed decades ago. If they could sever it, even briefly, it would buy them time.They didn’t make it halfway down the block.A sharp crack split the air.Concrete exploded inches from Luther’s head.“Sniper!” Marcus barked.They scattered instinctively, diving behind a burned-out transport truck. An