"She catches on remarkably fast, doesn't she?" Julian murmured, his fingers tightening just enough on Nyxis's wrist to elicit a sharp intake of breath. "A rare trait among the scavengers of the lower levels. Most of them prefer to swing first and ask questions when their skulls are already fractured against the pavement.""Shut your mouth, Julian," Nyxis hissed, her free hand clawing desperately at the metallic cuff encircling her arm, though the synthetic material refused to yield to human strength. "You’ve routed the entire municipal grid through your own nervous system. You aren't just powering the hospitals; you're harvesting them. Every heartbeat in the North Ward is feeding this damn loom.""It's called efficiency," Julian replied, his voice dropping into an unbothered, almost conversational register that made the blood roar in Harrison’s ears. "The city was dying of its own fragmentation. Million of individual minds, all pulling in different directions, all weeping over their p