The plaza was quieter than it should've been.
Sector Core, once the brightest artery in the city's heart, now blinked with halved ambition. Neon ran on delay. Holosigns flickered faint, like they were waking up slow from a long dream. Only the dome above kept time — casting dawn in vertical streaks across the architecture like a sun bleeding through cracked glass.
Hernan walked alone through its center.
No escort. No surveillance.
No name overhead.
The riot barriers had been dismantled. Civilian foot traffic passed steadily, but with a strange rhythm — as if each step was still asking permission. He passed a baker brushing soot from her storefront sign, two street techs rewiring a news node, a man repainting his food cart by hand. None stopped him. None saluted. None screamed.
But they looked.
Like he was something just outside language. The kind of face you remembered from a half-waking dream. One you couldn't explain — only feel.
