Chapter 15 · Sell the Truth to Everyone

Nora Quill had three minutes before the city forgot her name.

The countdown pulsed in the corner of her cracked monitor, red numbers reflected in the lenses of her goggles. 02:59. 02:58. Each digit flickered as if the municipal network itself were having trouble deciding whether she was alive.

Rain hammered the corrugated roof above her shop. Acid hissed through the gutter pipes and smoked where it struck the alley below. Somewhere beyond the boarded windows, the lower city groaned through another blackout. Elevators stopped between floors. Pumps coughed. Neon signs died one by one until the district became a canyon of wet concrete and darkness.

Nora kept both hands on the console.

A file directory occupied the center screen. PROJECT DAWN. ADAPTIVE HUMAN TOLERANCE TRIALS. INNER DISTRICT DISPOSAL PROTOCOL.

The last folder had been encrypted three times, then hidden inside a transit maintenance update. She had spent six hours cracking it while Eve and Cain were trapped beneath the old subway lines. Six hours of municipal counter-intrusion, six hours of Osric Vane whispering through dead speakers and trying to burn her out of the system.

Now she had everything.

Names. Dates. Payment ledgers. Medical footage.