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"It's in the walls!"
The woman's voice tore through my headset, raw and wet. "It's coming through the WALLS, oh god, my son is—"
Dead air.
I didn't wait. Fingers already moving, pulling the trace. Coords dropped onto my secondary screen. North industrial. Grid 14-K. I flagged it, reached for the next call.
Five more lit up before I could blink.
Then twenty.
Then the whole board went red.
"Dispatch, I need units to 14-K, we've got—" I stopped. The dispatch glyph was black. I tried again. Nothing.
Across the operations floor, every operator was on their feet. Voices overlapping. Someone screaming about the transit lines. Another about the water wards.
I pulled up the city grid.
Black.
Not offline. Not error. Black. Like someone reached into the network and ripped the veins out.
"Vale." Maran's voice cut through the chaos. My supervisor, pale under the blue emergency glow. "We're evacuating. You need to—"
"Evacuating where?" I didn't look away from my screen. "The whole grid's down. Transit, wards, water. Where exactly are we going?"
She grabbed my shoulder. "Sixty seconds. Then I'm dragging you."
She left.
I stared at the black grid. Everyone else was already halfway to the stairs.
But I still had one line active.
One.
I hit it.
Static roared into my ear, thick and choking. Then a voice broke through.
"—anyone there? Is anyone—"
Male. Young. Terrified.
"I'm here," I said. "Tell me where you are."
"I don't know, I can't see, the lights are gone, there's something—" He was running. Panting. "It's following me. I can hear it breathing."
"Okay, listen. I need you to—"
"Elara?"
My blood stopped.
I knew that voice.
"Finn?" My brother's name came out too loud. "Where are you? What are you—"
"You have to listen." He wasn't running anymore. His voice dropped, fast and low. "Get out. Right now. Don't go home. Don't go to the archive. Don't—"
"What are you talking about? Finn, what's—"
"They're gonna say it was you." His breath hitched. "They're gonna say you did this. You have to—"
The line died.
Not static. Just gone.
I stared at the empty glyph. Tried the trace. Nothing. Tried dispatch. Black. Tried Finn's personal line.
Dead.
The building groaned.
Low and wet, like bone bending. The wall glyphs started flickering. One by one, they went dark.
I ran.
The stairs were chaos. People shoved past me, crying, silent, screaming. I couldn't see Maran. Couldn't see anyone. I just followed the crowd down.
They're gonna say it was you.
I hit the ground floor and spilled into the street. The air tasted like copper and burnt sugar. Street lamps out. Wards out. Even the transit glyphs were black.
Someone screamed.
I turned.
The building behind me wasn't groaning anymore.
It was falling.
Not collapsing. Falling. Like something reached up from below and dragged it into the earth. The ground rippled. Cracked. People running, swallowed by the street. The wards peeled away like wet paper.
I ran.
Turned a corner. The street ahead was gone. Just a hole. So deep I couldn't see the bottom.
I turned back.
The hole was behind me too.
I stopped.
The air hummed.
Then the city went silent.
No screams. No falling buildings. Nothing.
I looked at my hands. They were glowing. Faint. Blue. The emergency glyph on my palm, the one every operator carries, was lit.
It had never done that before.
The ground opened up beneath me.
I fell.
And fell.
And—
—I woke up.
In my bed. My apartment. Morning light through the curtains. The transit line humming outside. Someone downstairs yelling about a delayed shipment.
I sat up.
My head felt like it'd been split open and badly stitched. My mouth tasted like blood. I looked at my palm. The emergency glyph was dark. Normal.
I checked my phone.
Three days earlier.
I stared at the date. Read it again.
Three days before the city died.
My hand was cramping. I looked down. I was holding something. Tight. My nails had left marks in my palm.
I opened my fist.
A token. Small. Black. Made of something that looked like glass but felt like bone. A glyph on one side I didn't recognize. On the other, a name.
I didn't know the name.
But I knew, with the kind of certainty that lived in my gut, that the man who owned this token was dead.
And somehow, I'd just lived through the last three days of my life twice.
My phone buzzed.
A text. Unknown number.
*Don't go to work today.*
I stared at it.
Another buzz.
*If you want to know what's coming, meet me at the old transit station. Noon. Come alone.*
Another.
*Bring the token.*
I looked at the black thing in my palm. At the name I didn't know. At the glyph that felt wrong just looking at it.
My phone buzzed one more time.
*And Elara? Don't tell your brother.*