The first thing Aiden lost was the city's heartbeat.
One moment, his lenses were full of data, traffic flows, patrol pings, Registry confidence metrics humming along the edges of the panel stream. The next, half of it flatlined.
"Channels just dropped," he muttered.
Beside him, Kael did not look away from the civic center.
Rain slicked the plaza, turning the barricades into dark ribs around the building. Orion had pulled a full ring while they were inside, boots and drones and a thin shimmer of shield hugging the civic stone. More units than Aiden had counted in the pre-session map. Someone had called reinforcements before the session even started.
That was either precaution or a plan.
He had not yet decided which was worse.
"Is that you or them," Kael asked.
"Me, this time," Aiden said. "Internal tried to choke outgoing feeds. Lin gave me a backdoor. I used it."
