On the fifty-sixth day after Day Zero, Orin Hux made an observation that Zayden had not been expecting from the direction it came from.They were in the main building at the end of the evening, after the facility had settled into its night rhythms, and Orin was going through the supply summary from the week's node assessments. He had been doing this for seven weeks and the motion of it had become as familiar as breathing: the notebook open, the columns updating, the supply numbers and the population counts and the sustainability projections that told him how the network was doing and what it needed.He looked up at some point and said: "The framework's pressure has been consistent for a week. But it is not intensifying."Zayden looked at him. "What do you mean?""The supply chain leverage the framework has been applying to the newly integrated communities. It is the same level of pressure it was applying on day one of the consolidation event. It has not escalate