CHAPTER 203 — WHEN THE CITY REFUSED TO STAND STILL
Night fell slowly over the city, but darkness no longer brought calm with it.
The skyline burned with tension.
Emergency advisories still pulsed across giant public screens high above the streets, staining entire districts in waves of red light that reflected against glass towers and crowded avenues like warnings the city had grown tired of hearing. Transportation routes remained fractured beneath the lockdown protocols, sections of the city frozen by centralized restrictions while other sectors moved through improvised pathways held together entirely by human coordination.
And somehow,
despite everything the system had done,
the city was still alive.
