The city no longer breathed with electricity.

It thrummed — a steady, organic rhythm that echoed through the concrete and steel like a second heartbeat.

Hale and Gray stood in the gutted substation beneath the Westline docks, where the walls pulsed faintly with soft blue light. The floor was a mosaic of broken circuit panels and exposed fiber lines — all of them humming with the same synchronized pulse they’d seen outside.

Gray knelt beside the uplink terminal, connecting his portable ...