The city had always watched.
Tonight, it buzzed.
Drones rose from hidden bays like metal insects, lifting into the low cloud cover by the dozen.
On Aiden's screen, they appeared as triangles gliding over the grid, each with a neat identifier and a list of objectives.
*INFRASTRUCTURE AUDIT – ARCUS DRONE SWEEP (PILOT).*
He read the parameters twice.
Coverage: partial, focused on "previously unreliable" sectors.
Sensors: visual, thermal, LIDAR, band-ping sync, behavioral clustering.
Behavioral.
Of course.
Not enough just to see you.
They wanted to see how you moved.
He sat at the Laundry Two console, headphones in, band plugged into the server.
Tal, Rin, and Mara crowded behind him; the rest were already in position across the veins.
The safehouse smelled like detergent and anxiety.
He toggled the internal channel.
"All teams, check in," he said.
