"The grid will light up anyway," Kaelen hissed, leaning heavily against the wooden crate as a fresh wave of pain wracked his cauterized shoulder. "Vance’s consoles are already screaming from the decentralized data dumps we pushed out this morning. A sudden power spike on sub-level six isn't going to trigger an alarm; it’s going to look like another routine system glitch in their failing infrastructure. They won't look twice until we're already past the primary security perimeter."Mara crossed her arms over her thick canvas jacket, her gaze shifting doubtfully from Kaelen to the grease-stained structural schematics spread out on the table. "And once we step off that lift? What happens when we hit the lower administrative tier? Those aren't automated cargo bays, Kaelen. That's Sector One. That's Vance’s front porch. They have permanent biometric checkpoints, automated turret grids, and corporate enforcers who don't negotiate.""They won't have time to use the turrets," Leila said, her

The heavy titanium doors of the executive suite groaned under the final, brutal shove, sliding apart with a sharp, pneumatic hiss that echoed through the vast, silent room.Leila stepped through the threshold first, her boots crunching on fragments of decorative obsidian tiling, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Her fingers instinctively tightened around the grip of her reclaimed sidearm, her eyes darting across the sweeping, unobstructed expanse of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows that dominated the far wall. Outside, the bruised, smog-choked expanse of the lower city sectors stretched out like a dying circuit board, dotted with the flickering, rebellious orange fires of the workers' uprising.Kaelen stumbled in right behind her, his left arm pinned stiffly against his ribs, his face drained of all color. He slammed the override panel with the heel of his palm, forcing the titanium doors to lock shut behind them, sealing off the hallway and the distant, chaotic sounds of

"You're standing in a graveyard, Vance," Leila said, her voice dropping an octave as she stepped past the threshold of the obsidian-tiled foyer, her boots leaving wet, soot-stained tracks across the imported wool. "And you didn't even dig the holes."Commander Vance didn’t flinch. He let out a slow, measured breath, swirling the amber liquid in his heavy crystal tumbler before taking a deliberate, unhurried sip. "A graveyard implies permanence, Miss Kross. What is happening down there—what you and your little rabble are attempting in the soot and the muck—is a temporary mechanical failure. A glitch in the line. Easily reset, easily purged.""Purged?" Kaelen slammed his back against the locked titanium doors, his breath hitching as a fresh wave of agony radiated from his cauterized shoulder down to his ribs. He gritted his teeth, his face beaded with cold sweat. "You've got three districts offline, Vance. The transit hubs are locked, the supply pipelines are severed, and the board has

"It’s too quiet," Kaelen muttered, his boots scraping against the freshly scrubbed concrete of the lower transit platform. He winced, instinctively pressing a hand against his bandaged shoulder where the cauterized flesh still throbbed with a dull, persistent ache. "I spent six years working these floors, Leila. There’s always the roar of the heavy freight lifts, the screech of pneumatic seals, the constant vibration under your boots. This... this feels like a tomb.""It’s not a tomb," Leila said, her voice steady as she adjusted the heavy strap of her canvas satchel. "It’s a pause. People are still figuring out what it means to wake up without a corporate quota hanging over their heads."She stepped around a puddle of oily rainwater that had leaked through a fractured overhead seal, her eyes scanning the cavernous expanse of Sector 2. The massive digital billboards that once blared mandatory production metrics and corporate propaganda now stood completely dark, their glass faces crac

The metal grate of the transit office door rattled violently against its frame, the heavy clang echoing off the concrete walls like a warning shot."Open the damn door, Leila! We saw the supply crates go down on the platform yesterday, and nobody’s handed out so much as a nutrient bar!"A man’s voice, rough and cracked from shouting, punched through the thin aluminum barrier. Instantly, a chorus of angry murmurs rose from the corridor outside, swelling into a restless, overlapping wall of sound that vibrated right through the floorboards.Leila dropped her grease-stained pen onto the mapping table, rubbing the bridge of her nose as a sharp headache flared behind her eyes. "They didn't see any supply crates go down yesterday," she muttered, her voice tight with exhaustion. "Because there weren't any."Kaelen didn't look up from the fried relay board resting in his lap, though his jaw tightened so hard a muscle twitched in his cheek. He carefully adjusted a microscopic copper wire with