The next morning didn't feel victorious.
It felt… watched in a different way.
Not the obvious kind—no boots marching in perfect lines, no containment grid parked at the courtyard like a warning sign. Those units were still around, but they'd moved back into the edges of campus where you could pretend they weren't there.
Which meant Oversight had learned the worst lesson possible:
Visibility wasn't control.
It was evidence.
So they stopped leaving evidence.
The Triangle opened like it always did—bells, corridor lights, that institutional blue pulsing along the walls like the building itself had a heartbeat. Students still walked to class. People still ate breakfast. People still trained.
But the rhythm had changed.
