CHAPTER 199 — WHEN PEOPLE STOPPED WAITING FOR PERMISSION
The city did not sleep anymore.
By the second night after the emergency protocols expanded publicly, exhaustion had settled over every district like a second atmosphere. Lights remained on in apartment towers long after midnight. Public networks pulsed endlessly with conversations that no suppression filter could fully contain. Streets that once emptied into perfect silence now carried movement through every hour of darkness, not chaotic movement, but restless movement, the kind born from millions of people sensing history changing around them in real time.
Elena felt it the moment she walked into the control room shortly after dawn.
Nobody inside looked rested.
