2026-01-12 23:52:12
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They didn’t get time to celebrate.The first siren was still echoing when Beverly’s voice cut through the smoke, sharp with panic. “That wasn’t the only node.”Davion pushed himself upright, pain screaming through his ribs. “Say that again.”“Thermal spikes,” Beverly said quickly. “Three—no, four—moving fast. They activated the moment this one went down.”Mira wiped blood from her eye, vision swimming. “They’re counterbalancing.”Jared coughed out a laugh that turned into a groan. “Adaptive escalation. Told you they wouldn’t stop.”The street trembled again—this time farther away, but heavier. The kind of impact that folded buildings inward instead of outward.Davion clenched his jaw. “We’re exposed.”As if summoned by the word, drones screamed back into the sky—new models, heavier, plated like armored insects. Red targeting lights swept the streets.Civilians screamed.“Evacuate!” Davion shouted, waving people back toward side streets. “Move! Don’t look back!”A pulse slammed into th
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The first explosion hit three blocks away.Davion felt it through the concrete before he heard it—the sharp thud that rattled windows and sent birds screaming into the sky. Car alarms erupted all at once, a metallic chorus of panic.Mira was already moving. “That’s not structural failure.”Beverly’s voice snapped through the earpiece. “Mobile node just went active. It’s deploying enforcement drones—fast ones.”Davion vaulted the stair rail two steps at a time. “Where?”“Market district,” Beverly replied. “Crowded.”Davion’s blood went cold. “Of course it is.”They burst onto the street as smoke rolled between buildings. People were running, shouting, stumbling over each other as sleek black drones tore through the air overhead. These weren’t surveillance models. They moved like predators—tight formations, adaptive spacing, weapons glowing faintly blue.“Custodians don’t waste time,” Mira muttered, firing her disruptor.The blast clipped a drone mid-flight. It spiraled into a storefron
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Davion had never wanted to be recognized.He stood at the edge of the library ruins, dust still clinging to his clothes, watching the crowd grow by the minute. People gathered not because someone told them to—but because something inside them pulled them there. Phones were raised. Voices overlapped. Arguments sparked and dissolved just as quickly.Truth didn’t arrive neatly.It arrived like this.Mira leaned against a cracked pillar nearby, arm in a sling Beverly had improvised. “They’re not leaving,” she said quietly.Davion nodded. “They won’t.”Beverly sat on the hood of a burned-out vehicle, pale but awake, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. Her eyes were sharp despite the exhaustion. “The spine’s still unstable,” she said. “They’ll try to reassert control, but… it won’t be clean anymore.”Jared sat a little apart from them, wrists bound again—this time by trust rather than tech. He stared at the crowd with something close to awe. “You gave them questions,” he murmured. “That
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The world didn’t end.It shifted.Beverly felt it first—a pressure behind her eyes, like trying to remember something that hadn’t happened yet. The screens in front of her flooded with data, cascading layers of architecture unfolding too fast to fully process. The spine wasn’t a single system. It was a living framework, threaded through infrastructure, communication, memory caches, even emergency services.“Oh my God,” she whispered. “It’s everywhere.”The lights in the library flickered—not off, not on, but uncertain. The air itself seemed heavier, charged with static.Davion staggered slightly, bracing himself against a table. “What did you do?”“I didn’t break it,” Beverly said quickly. “I exposed it.”Mira fired blindly toward the door as figures pushed through the smoke. Her disruptor crackled, slamming into one operative’s shield and sending them skidding back. Others moved in behind them, disciplined, relentless.“Fall back!” Davion shouted.They retreated deeper into the libra
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The safehouse wasn’t safe.That was the first thing Davion understood the moment the door sealed behind them. The building—an old community library repurposed and abandoned years ago—had been chosen because it sat in a blind spot of the city’s surveillance grid. Too obsolete to monitor closely. Too unimportant to upgrade.Which meant no one expected anything important to happen here.Davion leaned against a dusty bookshelf, chest still tight from the run. Beverly immediately began unpacking equipment, spreading cables, drives, and screens across a long wooden table like a surgeon preparing for an operation. Mira stood near the boarded-up window, watching the street below through a narrow crack.Jared sat on the floor.Unrestrained.That alone felt wrong.“You’re quiet,” Mira said without turning.Jared smiled faintly. “I’m enjoying the irony. For years, I controlled rooms like this. Now I’m a guest.”“Don’t get comfortable,” Beverly muttered. “You’re here because you’re useful. The mo
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They didn’t argue.That alone told Davion how serious the moment was.Sirens echoed closer now, bouncing off concrete and steel, overlapping into a single, rising pressure. Red-and-blue light flickered through broken warehouse windows, cutting through smoke and dust like warning signals from a future that was already collapsing.“We move,” Davion said.Beverly didn’t hesitate. She yanked her bag higher on her shoulder, fingers already flying across her device. “I can jam local feeds for thirty seconds. Maybe forty if nothing glitches.”Mira grabbed Jared by the arm and shoved him forward. “Walk. Don’t try anything stupid.”Jared laughed quietly. “You really think you can hide me?”“No,” Mira said. “But I think I can choose who doesn’t get you.”That shut him up.They slipped out through a side exit just as the first official patrol vehicles screeched to a stop at the front of the warehouse. Beverly’s jammer pulsed, knocking nearby cameras into static. Davion led them into the narrow s
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