The shift change at the Sector Four Industrial Hub was an exercise in staggering scale.
Every twelve hours, one hundred and fifty thousand Rootist laborers filed out of the massive subterranean foundries, while an identical number filed in to take their place. The central administrative plaza was a bottleneck of human misery—a sea of ragged, soot-stained bodies shuffling under the watchful eyes of five hundred heavily armed Imperial guards.
Nissa Tarvond stood at the apex of the plaza, an immovable, divine anchor of silver and steel.
She was a Rank 7 Hero of the Sovereign Imperium. Her physical presence was designed to project absolute security. But she was not a weapon. She was a shield. Her divine programming was written in binary absolutes: Preserve Life. Absorb Kinetic Threat. Do Not Strike.
The shift change was seventy percent complete when the geopolitical geometry of the continent suddenly, violently fractured.
