CHAPTER 193 — WHEN THE CITY STOPPED OBEYING QUIETLY
The crack did not stay small.
By the following morning, it had spread through the city in ways that no amount of correction could fully conceal anymore. Elena felt it before she even entered the building, in the strange tension hanging beneath ordinary movement, in the way people looked at delays now instead of ignoring them, in the way frustration lingered openly instead of dissolving beneath automatic trust. The city was still functioning, still moving, still holding itself together on the surface, but beneath that surface something had fundamentally changed.
People were paying attention.
And once attention sharpened, control stopped being invisible.
