The first train crossed the western viaduct before dawn, its armored grain cars bright beneath the cameras mounted along the river road. Nox watched from the Citadel's roof as it passed three blocks of shuttered shops and a line of people waiting outside an empty municipal ration hall.
The train did not slow when it reached the marked unloading spur. Its engines pulled the sealed cars onward toward Ironvale, leaving the people below to stare at food they could not touch.
Vasa lowered the borrowed range scope and checked the numbers moving across her tablet. "Thirty-two grain cars, six refrigeration cars, and four armored maintenance cars," she said. "Holt filed the whole train as protected national relief."
"Relief for who?" Kendra asked, resting her forearms on the parapet.
"The listed destination is blank," Vasa replied. "The cargo is real. The route is not."
