The engine stopped being patient at dawn, and it stopped on two fronts at once.
The first alarm came up through the canal water, which is the oldest alarm the city owns.
The river heart's slow rhythm broke into a stagger, then into a seizure.
Every lock between the foundry quarter plus the outer camps began grinding on a schedule that no longer existed.
The second alarm arrived ninety seconds later, and it came from beneath the north district, where a custodian node failed like a tooth cracking in a jaw.
"Two emergencies, one of you," Aria said, and the sentence was the whole week compressed into six words.
The war table assembled at a dead run, chairs sliding. Ilyra brought the river charts, Oren brought the north district's foundation maps, plus Sava brought the face of a woman who had already done the impossible math.
