2025-08-04 23:30:58
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Chapter Eighty Nine
The council room was quiet, but not still. Reeva sat at the corner table sorting messages while Mara paced with her arms crossed.Jake stood by the window, watching the lights in Zone Fourteen flicker in the distance. They weren’t losing ground to gunfire or barricades. They were losing it to silence. Districts weren’t defecting loudly — they were just disappearing. Some stopped responding to relay messages. Others canceled council observers. One by one, they slipped into Amanda’s system without a fight.“We can’t just keep making speeches,” Reeva said, not looking up. “We need something physical. Something real.” Jake didn’t reply. She’d said that before, and she wasn’t wrong. But something about hearing it again, here, made it feel heavier. Like the rebellion had failed. Like all they had left was to mimic what they’d once resisted.Mara stopped pacing and spoke. “They’re not choosing Amanda because she’s better. They’re choosing her because she exists. She’s got food routes, a work
Chapter Eighty Seven
And he had no answer.Jake sat by the river at dawn, watching the water carry the early light like a secret it didn’t want to keep. His boots were damp from the walk, and his coat smelled faintly of rust from the old fence he had crossed to get here. He hadn’t told anyone he was leaving the zone—no note, no weapon, no signs that he was running. He simply needed silence, a quiet that wasn’t shaped by someone else’s voice—not Amanda’s, not Reeva’s, not the teacher who had touched his shoulder with regret.He let the stillness stretch until the sun rose high enough to burn off the fog and the city behind him began to murmur back to life. His body remained still, but his mind tore through everything: Zone Nineteen had voted. Others would follow, some wouldn’t even wait. The promise of power and clarity was too strong, and Jake knew it. He knew what Amanda was offering looked like peace—maybe it was—but it wasn’t his, and it wasn’t theirs.A soft crunch of gravel behind him made Jake pause
Chapter Eighty Six
The hall had emptied, but the echo of Amanda’s voice clung to the walls.Jake stood alone at the front, not moving, not blinking. The others had dispersed into tight knots, Reeva arguing in a corner with Mara, two apprentices whispering near the stairwell, and Elena waiting by the door with arms crossed.No one approached him, he stayed still until the murmurs died out.Then: “She played that perfectly,” he said aloud, not to anyone in particular.Reeva stepped away from her argument. “You should’ve stopped her. Called her bluff.”“She didn’t bluff,” Jake replied.Elena spoke now, flat and cold. “You didn’t even look at her.”He turned, slowly. “I did.”“You didn’t look at *her*,” she corrected. “You looked at a threat. Not Amanda.”Mara joined them, folding her arms. “We all saw what she was doing.”Jake met her gaze. “Did we?”Later, in the quiet of the southern wing, Jake walked the perimeter alone. He always did this when something fractured, the physical motion helped him work th
Chapter Eighty Five
Amanda watched the light blink green.That meant the dock registry had accepted her offer. Another junction had folded into the foundation network—quietly, efficiently. No protest. No fuss.“Sector Nine just submitted,” said Davin, his voice thin behind the glass. “They’re calling it cooperative consolidation, but they know exactly what they signed.”Amanda didn’t look up. She was tracing her finger across a clean digital map on her desk. Blue circles marked resource centers. Gold bands showed stabilized transit corridors. She tapped one.“Tell them to re-route their northern shipments through Gate Twelve,” she said. “Too much traffic near the coast. It’s going to attract attention.”Davin hesitated. “That’s Jake’s border.”Amanda’s eyes finally lifted.“He doesn’t have borders,” she said. “He made that very clear.”She stood, folding her hands behind her back. The control room around her buzzed softly—screens humming, air vents shifting. Everything worked. That was the point.“Where’
Chapter Eighty Four
They met in the old broadcast station.No cameras. No stage lights. Just a repurposed transit terminal with long benches, rusted scaffolding, and the unmistakable smell of heat-damped metal. The walls still bore faded slogans from the old regime—ghosts of a broadcast network once used to pacify, now hollowed and silent.Jake stood near the center, arms crossed, head bowed slightly. He hadn’t written a speech. He didn’t bring diagrams or promises. He had only his presence—and that had to be enough.They came in shifts. First the builders and haulers from the outer yards, then water keepers from the western pipe routes. Signal techs. Medics. Runners. Leaders from small blocks Jake had never walked, yet whose people knew his name.Some greeted him with nods. Others barely looked at him. But they came.Reeva moved among them, organizing the benches into rough arcs. Elena checked the wiring on the overhead lanterns. Mara stood guard at the doors, watching for outsiders or agents trying to
Chapter Eighty Three
The light was still soft the next morning when Jake rose. A low mist curled across South Ridge, blurring the lines between buildings, rails, and sky. He stepped out from the makeshift shelter at the yard’s edge and took a slow breath. Smoke and steel and wet concrete. The scent of a city that still remembered how to ache.He didn’t wake Elena. She was curled near the small fire pit, her arm draped over a satchel of paper maps and cables. The past few weeks had drained them both.Jake crossed the yard quietly, boots crunching on gravel. He wasn’t going anywhere specific. He just needed to move.At the outer gate, a runner waited—young, wiry, shaking from cold and urgency.“Message,” the boy said, holding out a folded cloth marked with a broken circle and dot.Jake stiffened.Amanda.He took it, unfolded the cloth, and read the words inked carefully into the fabric.**South Sector Forty-Two has declared support for New Unity.****No guns. No mandates. Just structure. People are listenin
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