The moment the squads split, the noise of the city changed.
Not louder.
Not quieter.
Sharper.
Netoshka felt it in the way reality pressed back against her glitch-field—like Cerevra itself was correcting for her existence. Every step Team One took along the West Side routes felt measured by something unseen, something patient.
They moved through a skeletal stretch of infrastructure: elevated walkways, maintenance bridges, half-finished commercial towers sealed behind black alloy shutters. This side of the city wasn't meant for civilians.
It was meant for systems.
"West Side density is lower," Circe's last transmission echoed faintly in Netoshka's memory.
"Which means whatever's here matters."
Lyra walked a half-step ahead, blade low, eyes constantly moving. She hadn't spoken since the split. That worried Netoshka more than if she had.
"Contact minimal," Zopi whispered.
"Too minimal."
Genrihk agreed.
"This district is not abandoned. It is restrained."
They crossed beneath a transit overpass where massive data conduits ran like veins along the ceiling. Red status lights pulsed at even intervals—heartbeat steady, artificial.
Netoshka paused.
Her vision flickered.
Numbers threatened to surface.
She forced them down.
"This side handles coordination," she said quietly. "Records. Oversight. Decision-making."
Ron frowned. "No factories?"
"No," Netoshka replied.
"Judgment."
They reached a security checkpoint embedded directly into the structure of a tower—no guards visible, but scanners hummed softly, sweeping the air itself.
Twila moved first.
Her illusion bled outward, fracturing Netoshka's silhouette into overlapping afterimages that walked in opposite directions. The scanners hesitated—confused.
That was all they needed.
They slipped through.
Inside, the building felt wrong.
Clean. Quiet. Clinical.
Walls were lined with embedded screens—most inactive, some flickering with fragments of footage: interrogation rooms, holding cells, biometric readouts scrolling too fast to read.
Alev clenched his fists.
"This is where people vanish."
Lyra finally spoke.
"And where they're rewritten."
Netoshka stopped.
"You've seen this before."
Lyra didn't look at her.
"Different city. Same architecture."
They pushed deeper.
A terminal room opened before them—rows of inactive stations arranged in a semicircle facing a central dais. Suspended above it was a holographic emblem:
A red circle bisected by a vertical line.
Equilibrium.
Genrihk hissed softly.
"This symbol carries weight."
Netoshka stepped forward and placed her hand on the console.
The system resisted.
She pushed harder.
Reality twitched.
Data flooded in—detention logs, relocation orders, psychological profiles. Names without faces. Faces without names. Entire families marked **NONCOMPLIANT**.
Her jaw tightened.
"They're not just arresting people," she said.
"They're categorizing them."
Taran scanned a side feed.
"I'm seeing references to 'youth viability.'"
Netoshka went still.
"…What?"
"Children," Taran said grimly.
"They're flagged separately."
Silence fell.
Netoshka's hands curled into fists.
"That's Eastern Side," she said.
Lyra looked at her sharply. .
"You're sure?"
"Yes."
She pulled back from the console, already recalculating.
"Whatever they're doing to adults," she continued,
"they're testing on children."
Zopi swallowed.
"Zev's team—"
Netoshka cut the thought off before it finished.
"They know what they're doing," she said.
"And they'll call if they need extraction."
Even as she said it, the air shifted.
A low hum rolled through the building.
Emergency lighting flickered red.
Genrihk turned slowly.
"We have been acknowledged."
From deeper within the structure, heavy doors began to unlock—one by one.
Lyra drew her blade fully now.
"This side isn't meant to be breached," she said.
"Which means we're close to something important."
Netoshka's outline glitched faintly.
"Good," she replied.
She looked back once—toward the direction East Side lay beyond layers of concrete and steel.
A bad feeling twisted in her chest.
"Move," she ordered.
They advanced as the building came alive around them.
Somewhere across the city, unseen and unheard—
Two children screamed.
And the West Side prepared its response but couldn't be heard or seen due to the Harden roon walls blockading each other.