The Triangle did not issue a response.
Not an announcement.
Not a denial.
Not even a correction.
Which meant the system had done something far worse than react.
It had decided to absorb the damage.
Absorption was what large systems did when force was no longer an option. They reshaped, redistributed, and quietly reassigned blame into places where it could no longer be isolated. The public drill had bruised Oversight's authority—but not fatally. Not yet.
So the Triangle chose the oldest method available to any institution that had survived long enough to learn restraint.
It normalized the rupture.
The morning after the Integrity Alignment Drill ended, students woke to a campus that looked… better.
Cleaner floors.
New signage.
Fresh interface banners announcing Enhanced Student Support Measures.
Even the air smelled different—sterilized, faintly citrus, like something meant to suggest renewal.
That alone set Dreyden on edge.
