The sub-basement command center smelled of burned circuitry and something older underneath it — a deep, organic rot that had nothing to do with the flooded lower rings. The jagged blue light of low-battery holographic projectors stuttered across decaying paper archives, casting everything in the color of a screen about to die. The gore from the riot three floors above had tracked down here on their boots. Will hadn't noticed until he sat down and found a dark smear across the edge of the steel desk that hadn't been there before.
He didn't move it. He pulled up the interface and started working.
His joints ground with every shift of his weight. The Sovereign tax was a persistent, bone-deep ache that the command center's cold only sharpened. He ran the pain the way he ran everything — filed it, accounted for it, worked around it. He had enough mana left to keep the bulkheads sealed and enough focus left to read. That was the math. He started there.
