CHAPTER 204 — WHEN THE WALLS OF CONTROL STARTED COLLAPSING
The first barrier fell at 9:42 that night.
Not through violence.
Not through destruction.
Through people refusing to move backward anymore.
Elena watched the live footage from the central transit district while silence swallowed the control room whole. Thousands of civilians filled the streets beneath the towering skyline, their bodies packed shoulder to shoulder beneath emergency lights that painted the city in red and white flashes. The immobilization barriers stretched across the district like steel scars cutting through the movement of the city, cold and absolute beneath the system's authority.
And then ordinary hands began pulling them apart.
