By morning the city had new borders. Not lines on maps—lines inside people. You could feel them in the elevator pauses, in the way conversations flattened when her name rose, in the tremor of a thousand notifications landing at once. ValeCorp’s black glass still glittered on the streets, but the feeds had already learned how to talk around it. “Incident.” “Unrest.” “Isolated extremists.” The old words trying to cage new fire.
Aria watched from the depot’s loading bay as the rain thinned to a mist that made everything look farther away. Her side ached where Damaris’s claws had opened her. The bandage held. So did the fury under it.
Kellen sat cross-legged on a crate with three screens haloed around his head. “He’s flooding the networks,” he said. “Professional grief. Polished outrage. A c
