On the streets of Orbitera, the pervasive, humming life of the city died. Electricity failed. The colossal advertising screens flickered once, their final axiom truncated, then plunged into absolute blackness. The Aegis-Cams fell silent, their lenses fixed in impotent, blank angles. The very infrastructure of control had collapsed.
Saira, emerging from the smoking, collapsed sub-levels, saw the terrifying, unexpected darkness.
"We did it," she murmured, but the triumph was muted by the dread. "But the consequences will be immediate, and absolute."
The silence lasted only a moment before a sound the city had forgotten erupted: true, unpoliced panic—shouts, the sound of machinery failing catastrophically, and the frightened cries of people who had been violently stripped of their infrastructure and their decades-old security blanket.