The Black House was silent.
Adrian didn't wait for the morning briefing neither did he wait for the sun to rise before he stood up to work.
He went to the kitchen to prepare his coffee first then changed into something comfortable.
By 0400, he was already deep into the data mesh of his human network, his eyes reflecting the scroll of anomalies.
Lucian was occupied with the fallout of the board-share dump and Adrian knew that in the chaos of a financial war, the physical world left openings.
He found the pattern. It wasn't a rise in supernatural activity. It was fuel.
Three independent fuel shipments, diverted from the municipal grid. Four cold-storage units in the industrial "Dead Zone" of the Zargos border, rented under a shell company that hadn't existed seventy-two hours ago. Night dock usage at Pier 19—a pier officially condemned since the Unification.
'Why did this keep happening?'
