Rain didn't fall in the Bureau of Harmony.
Not because of weather tech—though that was certainly involved—but because even the clouds above the Bureau's looming obsidian structure knew better than to disturb it.
Everything about the Bureau HQ was silence wrapped in symmetry. Its reflective walls pulsed faintly with rhythmic energy—like it breathed in cold math and exhaled controlled fear. Tarn Vesh's domain.
Luma stared at the building from a rooftop across the plaza, soaked in sweat despite the crisp air. "This is fine. Totally fine. Just a little break-in to one of the most tightly monitored entropy zones in the Expanse. I mean, who doesn't do that by seventeen?"
"You're fourteen," Juno corrected. "And also, we're not breaking in."
Ion glanced over. "We're infiltrating. It sounds more polite."
Luma huffed. "Great. I'll let the guards know we came dressed for subversion, not rebellion."
They weren't alone. Flanking them were eight resistance members—former students, engineers, quiet factory workers—each wearing a small harmonic resonator belt calibrated to their unique body rhythms. At their waists hung tuning rods, sound coils, and one hilariously dented cymbal. That one belonged to a boy named Den, whose idea of subtlety involved volume and velocity.
Beneath their feet, embedded in the plaza below, hummed the largest entropy net in the region. It converted dissonant waveforms—panic, confusion, even laughter—into destabilizing energy that fueled Tarn's field grid. That's what they had to take down.
Juno pulled out a hand-sized coil with rainbow wiring. "This is the sync beacon. Once activated, we'll each emit a frequency that cancels out the net's feedback loop. It has to be perfectly timed. Even one person off-beat…"
"Boom?" Den asked, visibly excited.
"No," Juno said. "Worse. We enhance the net. Then it eats us."
Den put his cymbal down gently.
Ion looked at Luma. "You're the resonance core. The sync has to start with you."
Luma nodded, breath catching slightly. She touched the tuning dial on her gauntlet. "What do I do if I mess up?"
"Improvise. You're good at that," Ion said, smiling just enough to make her believe it.
They moved as one, like shadows slipping through sound.
When they reached the courtyard, the sensors didn't blink—thanks to Rhon and Selka's hack from the west node. But the ground buzzed beneath their boots, like the plaza knew it was being challenged.
Luma took her place in the center.
She lifted her gauntlet, took a shaky breath, and began to hum.
The tone wavered—low, pure, rising—and then fell into rhythm. One by one, the others joined in: soft whistles, harmonic vibrations from rods, synchronized pulses from the belts.
And then—Den hit the cymbal.
For a moment, it seemed like everything would explode.
Instead, the cymbal's chaotic chime matched the ripple—accidentally perfect. The ground convulsed, and then stilled. Beneath them, the entropy net began to short out—threads of red light flaring, blinking, fading.
Sirens wailed from the Bureau HQ.
Juno shouted, "They're rerouting power! Get ready!"
Guards poured from the upper balconies—dressed in rigid light-armor, entropy blasters humming.
Luma ducked as a beam sliced the air above her.
Ion redirected two with a charged pulse coil, flipping a guard with an elegant spin.
Juno used a pair of lenses to bounce an incoming beam through the building's mirrored entryway—shorting the turrets inside.
And Luma, her gauntlet now vibrating like a tuning fork on espresso, aimed at the tower's resonance column—and sang a note so strong it cracked glass.
The building's grid collapsed with a rising wail.
Inside the command room, Tarn Vesh watched through a screen, face unreadable. The entropy map flickered, glitched, then blacked out.
"She's destabilizing the base harmony," he murmured. "Using motion and will."
He pressed a switch.
"Activate Phase Lockdown Protocol. If they want a fight, give them the whole scale."
Back outside, the building trembled.
Luma's gauntlet blinked a new warning.
"Oh no."
Juno grimaced. "What?"
"They're tuning back."
The Bureau was about to sing back, and it wouldn't be a lullaby.
To be continued…