The air tasted of metal and static. The Grid's scream had faded to a low, trembling hum that shivered through the spire's bones. Cain stood at the center of it, his blade still wet with the residue of ruptured cables and machine oil. The red emergency lights flickered in slow pulses, painting everyone in the same fevered shade of blood.
No one spoke at first. The silence was too thick—too deliberate. The kind that felt like the city itself was deciding whether to breathe again.
Then Susan exhaled. "We cut deeper than I thought." Her voice trembled at the edge of exhaustion.
Steve sat against a wall, fingers twitching in phantom rhythm as though still wiring circuits. "We didn't just blind them," he muttered. "We tore out their sense of self. The Grid doesn't know what it is anymore."
Hunter crouched near a shattered terminal, studying the dead lights as if trying to read prophecy from glass. "That means instability. Not freedom. They'll rebuild."
