The southeastern residential segment had been at full configuration for three weeks when the central administrative extension entered its final stretch, and the four-segment integration's combined effect had by then settled into the sustained, steady quality of something that had found its operating rhythm and was no longer adjusting to itself but simply running.
Halfway.
Four segments complete. The fifth in its final weeks of configuration. The sixth — the final integration segment, the one that would connect all five configured segments through the central administrative hub into the unified system the full schematic had always been designed to create — waiting.
The halfway point carried a different quality than Adrian had expected it to carry.
He had expected satisfaction, perhaps. Or the relief of a significant milestone reached. The specific emotional register of something that had been worked toward for a long time being achieved.
What he felt instead was clarity.
