The first explosions shook the city awake.
Dust fell from ceilings, sparks from broken cables rained like orange fireflies. The hum of life—mechanical and human—collapsed into screaming, sirens, and smoke.
The Accord's "Directive Null" had begun.
At the underground, Mira ducked as a tremor cracked through the tunnel wall. Chunks of concrete fell into the water below. "Keep the lines open!" she shouted over the roar.
Rebel techs crouched beside the flickering Resonance console, fingers flying across rusted keys. Sparks spat from the machine, illuminating terrified faces.
"They're jamming all frequencies," one gasped. "Every relay is collapsing— we'll lose the network in minutes!"
Mira's throat burned with dust and fury. "Then we build new ones. Use the mobile nodes—Kael's design. Move them to the outer tunnels!"
"But they'll track us!"
"They already are." Her eyes flashed. "We move, or we die unheard."
She turned toward the deeper tunnel where the hum was faintest—almost gone.
For a moment she felt the ache of silence pressing against her skull, heavy and suffocating.
She clenched her jaw. You can't kill a sound that's already inside us.
Above at The Tower Kael reached the upper elevator shaft—steel, glass, and fire. The power grid flickered red; each surge pulsed through his shard like a heartbeat. He could feel the Accord's suppression waves clawing at his nerves.
Every step forward felt like wading through liquid silence.
He tore a panel open, rewiring the circuit the way Mira once taught him: connect, pulse, release.
The elevator lurched upward. Beyond the rising glass, the city burned—whole blocks swallowed by the Accord's cleansing light.
He pressed a hand against the window. "Not again," he whispered.
The shard answered, glowing fierce and alive. It hummed a note that didn't belong in this world—raw, human, defiant.
Kael smiled grimly. "Good. Stay with me."
---
Back Underground,The rebels had scattered through the maintenance levels. Mira's voice cut through the static of every comm device still alive.
"Node Five—status?"
"Online. Barely."
"Seven?"
"Gone."
"Then reroute through Four. We can't lose the eastern ring."
She glanced toward the flickering monitor—each surviving node a tiny pulse of light in the dark map. Every one was a heartbeat of the Resonance, fragile and fading.
If they all died, silence would win.
"Status report."
The silver-eyed woman stood before a wall of failing monitors. Behind her, officers barked coordinates and issued sterilization commands.
"Outer sectors cleared," a lieutenant replied. "But internal corruption persists. The Resonance is adapting."
She frowned. "Adapting?"
The lieutenant swallowed. "It's… evolving, ma'am. Frequencies we've never recorded before. It's like it's alive."
Her eyes narrowed to shards of glass. "Then we crush it before it learns to speak.
Kael burst into the command floor, the shard blazing like a small sun in his hand. Alarms screamed. Guards turned, weapons raised.
He moved like a current—fast, unpredictable. The Resonance pulsed through his veins, guiding him, shielding him.
He leapt over a fallen console, slammed his palm against the central control port, and flooded the network with the shard's frequency.
The entire tower went white.
From the tunnels below to the highest sector spire, the city trembled with a single, unified note—a sound pure enough to shatter glass, to wake sleeping machines, to stir buried memories.
Mira looked up as the sound washed through the tunnels, tears streaking her dust-covered face.
"Kael," she whispered.
The silver-eyed woman clutched the edge of her console as her implants flickered. "Impossible…" she hissed. "He's merging with it."
Kael stood in the center of the storm of light and sound, eyes glowing like molten silver.
He whispered one word, carried across every frequency, to every survivor still listening:
"Rise."