The district announced itself long before they reached it.
It rose out of the city's lower tiers as a riot of color and sound, sprawling across a broad floating shelf the size of a small town, and the moment the team stepped off the transit ribbon onto its edge, the noise rolled over them like a wave. Hawkers' cries. The ring of haggling. The low roar of a distant crowd somewhere deeper in. Smells layered thick in the dense air, roasting meat and burning incense and the sharp ozone bite of active arrays, all of it tangled together into one living, breathing thing.
"Now this," Lyra said, her ears pricking forward, the hunger back in her eyes, "is more like it."
It was, as she'd promised, three things stacked into one.
