Cain stood over the breaker, the hum of the Grid's veins rising until it filled the corridor like a second heartbeat. Steve's hands shook as he gripped the final line, a cable pulsing with white light, alive and defiant. Every instinct screamed at him not to sever it. Every nerve told him it was death.
"Cut it," Cain said again, voice flat as stone.
Steve grit his teeth and yanked.
The corridor erupted in a scream that was not sound, not electricity, but something older—a distortion that pulled at the marrow of their bones. Lights ruptured in a chain of explosions, one after another, until the ceiling rained sparks and fire. The Grid convulsed. Every server, every cable, every humming console buckled as though it had been waiting for this strike.
Susan clutched the wall, coughing through the acrid smoke. "You didn't just cripple them," she rasped. "You tore the spine out."
