"Step away from the port. Now."
The voice was Charlotte Soladorn's. She stood at the entrance to the service shaft, flanked by two enforcers. Her grey suit was immaculate, her face a mask of cold fury. She held a small, black device—a null-field projector, primed with the silver entropy.
"You think you can sing to a supernova?" she said, her voice dripping with contempt. "You are children throwing pebbles at a dam. You've accelerated the cascade. That… tone… has destabilized the constriction field further."
She took a step forward. "The solution is not a lullaby, Pendragon. It is a controlled detonation. We purge the corrupted section, seal it behind a null-field, and rebuild. Your little instrument merely showed us where to cut."
She raised the projector, aiming it not at them, but at the service port, at the flickering resonator. "This childish experiment is over. The mechanics of this world are force and control. You will learn that, or you will be unmade by it."
Sage stared, hopelessness a stone in his gut. She was right. They were pebbles. The Stillpoint Spin was guttering out.
Then, from behind Charlotte, a new voice. Decisive. Commanding.
"The only thing being unmade here, Charlotte, is your understanding."
Lysander Chrismont filled the doorway. He was dressed in stolen maintenance gear, his face smudged with soot, but his posture was that of a general. Behind him, a handful of figures—the grizzled janitor, others from the network—held jury-rigged tools that hummed with power.
"You mistake a symphony for a single note," Lysander said, striding forward. The enforcers turned their weapons on him, but he didn't flinch. "You've been listening to the scream so long, you've forgotten the music."
He nodded to Sage. "Hold your note, son. The choir is here."