The fluorescent lights in the precinct bullpen didn't flicker. They hummed with a new, aggressive frequency that set Anna's teeth on edge. On the monitor, her own face stared back at her—a digitized ghost with a red "Priority: Immediate" tag burned across her forehead.

  Anna swept her hand across her desk, knocking her coffee mug to the floor. The ceramic shattered, a sharp crack that drew eyes from across the room. In the confusion of the sound, she stood, grabbed her coat, and walked toward the side exit—the one that led to the evidence lockers and the service alley.

  "Harris?" Luke called from the coffee station. "Where are you going? The Captain's calling a briefing on the transit crash."

  "Forgot something in my car." She didn't look back. If she looked at Luke, she'd see the digital shadow the Protocol had already cast over him.

  She hit the alley air just as a pair of black Vanguard SUVs pulled into the precinct's main lot, tires screaming against the wet asphalt. They weren't there for the briefing.

  She turned the corner, hand on the grip of her service weapon, when something reached out from the darkness of a recessed loading dock and pulled her into the shadows.

  She spun, the barrel of her Glock pressing into the sternum of a matte-black chest plate.

  "Don't." A mechanical, distorted rasp.

  The Black Ghost stood in the gloom, the white hatchet on his chest the only thing catching the distant strobe of the precinct lights. He looked different without the exoskeleton's bulk. Thinner. More human.

  "You're on the list." Anna lowered the gun. "I saw the logs. They're coming for you, too."

  "They're already here." His eyes tracked the red glow of a drone hovering three blocks away. "Stay here, you're a statistic. Come with me, you're a target."

  "I'm already a target." Anna glanced back at the precinct doors as they burst open, Vanguard units spilling out like a black tide. "How do we get out? The pylons are up."

  "We don't." He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the rusted fire escape of an adjacent tenement. "We go deeper. The Protocol monitors the grid, but it doesn't know the sewers. Wesley found a gap in the South Sumlin runoff."

  As they climbed, a searchlight from the Vanguard SUVs raked the brickwork behind them. The city's emergency broadcast system droned from the street-corner speakers: "Attention citizens. Detective Anna Harris is wanted for questioning in connection with an institutional sabotage case. If sighted, do not approach. Contact Vanguard Security immediately."

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  Anna looked at the man in the mask as they reached the rooftop. "Bradford did this. He's making the city eat its own."

  "He's pruning the garden." Devin moved toward the ledge. "We're the weeds."

  They vanished over the edge just as the first Vanguard drone crested the roof, its thermal camera sweeping for a heat signature already moving into the dark heart of Sumlin.

  The South Sumlin runoff tunnels were cold and damp, smelling like a grave. Devin pressed his back against the slime-slicked brick, fingers tight around the Neural Disruptor Spike. Ten yards ahead, a lone figure knelt by a junction box, movements lacking the practiced, aggressive rhythm of a Vanguard contractor.

  He wasn't a soldier. He was a man doing a job he hated.

  Devin closed the distance in three strides and pinned the man against the wall with a forearm to the throat.

  "Don't." The man wheezed, eyes wide behind thick-rimmed glasses. He wasn't reaching for a weapon. He held out a hand, palm open.

  "Matthew Steincamp." The mechanical distortion of the suit made the name sound like a verdict. "Former Senior Engineer for Sumlin Public Works. You're a long way from the office."

  "I knew you'd come." Steincamp's breath hitched. He didn't struggle. His eyes went to the device he'd been wiring—not a bomb, but a high-capacity data bridge. "I'm not like Bradford. I don't want to see the city burn. But the Protocol doesn't give you a choice. You're either a gear or you're grit."

  He pressed a small, jagged data shard into Devin's gloved palm.

  "What is this?"

  "The truth the Mayor won't look at." Steincamp kept his voice low. "It's the predictive model for the next phase. Bradford calls it Systemic Stabilization. I call it a massacre."

  In the distance, the heavy rhythmic thud of Vanguard boots echoed through the tunnel. Steincamp pulled away from Devin and straightened his rumpled jacket.

  "Go. If I run, they'll hunt us both. If I stay, I'm just a confused engineer who wandered into the wrong tunnel. Give that shard to Wesley. Tell him to look at the Sacrifice Nodes."

  Devin held a beat, then slipped into the black maw of the deeper drainage pipe just as a Vanguard searchlight raked the tunnel. From the shadows, he watched Steincamp drop to his knees, hands behind his head, as the tactical units swarmed in.

  Two hours later, the Warehouse was silent except for the frantic hum of Wesley's cooling fans.

  Devin stood over Wesley's shoulder, mask off, face carrying a fatigue that went deeper than his skin. On the main monitor, the data shard's contents were unfolding in a cold blue wireframe of Sumlin.

  "He wasn't lying." Wesley's voice was barely above a breath. "They're planning an architectural purge of the city."

  He tapped a key. Two districts pulsed angry red on the map: North Sumlin and the Port District.

  "The Protocol has calculated that the grid can't sustain the lockdown load," Wesley said. "To keep the prime areas—Downtown and the Lennox Tower—operational, the system is scheduled to initiate a total grid collapse in these two zones. Not a blackout. A permanent severance. Life support, emergency services, communications—everything goes to zero to save the core."

  Devin leaned over the console, eyes moving through the scrolling logs. "The neighborhoods are the ballast. They're tossing them overboard to keep the ship upright."

  "It's worse." Wesley pointed to a small cluster of figures at the bottom of the screen. "Look at the execution window."

  The air left Devin's lungs when he saw the latest hit time.

  PROJECTED ACTIVATION: 0400 HOURS. TIMESTAMP: TOMORROW.

  "We don't have days." Wesley looked up, eyes wide and bloodshot. "We have twelve hours before the city decides half its population is redundant."

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