Block 11 was cordoned off in concentric circles.
Inner ring: Guard tape, portable barriers, ground sensors.
Middle ring: confused residents staring from doorways and shop fronts.
Outer ring: curious idiots filming on their phones, streaming commentary about "underground boss chamber patch???"
Kael flashed his borrowed TRI badge and ducked into the inner ring.
A construction crew had already cut through the cracked pavement. A jagged, dark hole yawned where a utility access panel used to be.
Cool air wafted up.
It smelled… old.
And faintly ozone-burned.
Seori stood near the hole, checking a portable node. Her uniform was dusty; a smudge of concrete streaked her cheek.
Her badge glowed in Kael's debug view.
[ROLE: CITY EVALUATOR (LOCAL).]
He approached like a normal support staffer, not a walking System exploit.
"Node status?" he asked.
She glanced up, taking him in quickly: not Guard, not pure TRI, somewhere in between.
"Stable," she said. "Just mapping life signs in the danger zone so far. Two Guard already went down on a rope. No civilians inside the immediate collapse."
Her UI blinked; she flicked her eyes to the side.
"And the Node downstairs?" Kael asked carefully.
She stiffened.
"Node?" she echoed.
He caught himself.
"Sorry," he said smoothly. "Any sensor anomalies? Old tech pinging?"
Her shoulders eased a fraction.
"There's something causing interference," she admitted. "We tried dropping a standard mapping drone. It lost contact at about ten meters down. Could be mineral content. Could be… something else."
Mira joined them, sliding in with a nod.
"Observer Mira Han," she said to Seori. "Thanks for jumping on this."
"Just doing my job," Seori said.
Her badge pulsed once more.
[CITY EVALUATOR: CONTEXT – POTENTIAL HAZARD BELOW CIVILIAN ZONE.]
The hole darkened as a Guard squad finished rigging safer access: a reinforced ladder bolted to one side, with safety harness lines hanging.
The squad leader—a broad-shouldered woman with a shaved head—jerked her chin at Kael.
"You're the analyst," she said. "We go first. You follow. No heroics."
"Strongly in favor of no heroics," Kael said.
They descended.
The tunnel was older than the Towers.
Kael could see it in the brickwork, the style of the supports, the corroded labels on pipes.
Symbols from before the System built UIs into everyone's eyes.
His Debug Sense flickered around the edges.
[OBJECTS: NON-SYSTEM ORIGIN (LEGACY HUMAN).]
And beneath that, like a thin film:
[OVERLAY: SYSTEM RETROFIT – MINOR.]
Someone had come down here after the Towers arrived and grafted a thin layer of System awareness onto the old infrastructure.
Someone like ADMIN_0.
The Guard squad's lights swept over a collapsed section where the ceiling had given way.
Beyond that, an open chamber yawned.
Kael stepped through.
He felt it before he saw it.
The distinct, too-clean presence of a Node.
[OBJECT: UNDERCITY_NODE_AUX-01.][STATUS: DORMANT (LEGACY / LOCAL).]
It sat in the center of the chamber like a small, squat pillar—half the height of the one in Tower Thirteen's sealed floor, wrapped in cables that disappeared into old conduits.
Unlike the cracked Node in Thirteen, this one was merely dusty.
Not broken.
Sleeping.
The interference ping on Seori's node made sense now: it had been bouncing off this auxiliary Node like sonar off an old hull.
The Guard captain whistled.
"That doesn't look like any Node I've seen," she said.
Mira's voice drifted down from above through Kael's ear feed.
I see it through your overlay, she said. ADMIN_0 signature. Auxiliary city node. Probably tied into pre-Tower systems.
Kael approached.
His skin prickled.
Seori's voice came over local comms from up top.
"Node just stabilized," she said. "I'm getting cleaner readings now. Whatever was jamming it is… calming down?"
Kael reached out with his Debug Sense.
The Node's label unfolded.
[ADMIN_0 UNDERCITY AUX NODE.][PURPOSE: LOCALIZED WORTH EVALUATION FOR NON-TOWER INFRASTRUCTURE.][COMMENT: "Because Towers aren't the only things that matter, you shortsighted idiots."]
He snorted despite the tension.
"That sounds like ADMIN_0," he said.
The Guard captain eyed him.
"Bad news?" she asked.
"Old news," he said. "This Node was built to do worth calculations for city infrastructure—pipes, tunnels, utilities. It's been dormant. The collapse shook it. It woke up enough to confuse our modern nodes."
He glanced at the label again.
Another line blinked faintly.
[SECONDARY PURPOSE: EXPERIMENTAL HUMAN-IN-LOOP EVALUATION.]
His stomach dropped.
"Mira," he murmured. "This Node's an ancestor of the life-support one in the hospital. And the transit adjustments. And maybe… City Evaluator roles."
"Meaning?" she asked.
"Meaning if this thing fully wakes up under the wrong vector, it could start making 'underground worth' calls with very old assumptions," he said.
"Can you talk to it?" she asked.
"Probably," he said. "Question is: should I alone?"
He looked up, imagining the street grid above, the buildings, the people.
Seori, topside, staring at her node.
Her badge pulsed quietly.
[CITY EVALUATOR: INPUT POSSIBLE.]
An idea formed that he didn't entirely like.
"Mira," he said slowly. "City-side worth. Underground utilities. Human-in-loop. We have someone whose bias is literally tagged 'city evaluator.'"
"Seori," Mira said.
"Yeah," he said. "She should be the one to calibrate this. Not a Tower bug like me."
"You don't want another Root glitch," the Guard captain said dryly.
"Exactly," he said.
He pinged Seori on a low-priority channel.
Hey. This is Kael. From TRI support.
There was a pause.
The analyst? she replied. With the cursed HP bar rumor?
He winced.
…yes.
Please tell me you're not calling because I messed up that collapse priority, she wrote.
You did fine, he said quickly. I need your help with something else. There's an old Node down here. City infrastructure type. It was built to let humans weigh in when it rated tunnels and pipes. Sounds familiar?
A long pause.
Seori's badge blinked hard.
[UNDERCITY_NODE_AUX-01: OPEN TO HUMAN INPUT.][RECOMMENDED PARTICIPANT: CITY EVALUATOR (LOCAL).]
You want me to… talk to an ancient sewer Node, she wrote.
Yes, he said. Because it's about your job. Not mine. Towers aren't my city. The pipes are yours.
Up above, Seori looked at the hole, at her portable node, at the flickering badge.
This was insane.
But so was everything since the Root glitch.
She took a breath.
"Hyun," she said. "If my brain explodes, delete my browsing history."
"How do you always make this about you," he muttered, but his eyes were worried.
She stepped closer to the hole, placed her hand on the rope railing, and let the Node's invitation wash over her.