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When a live node goes missing and an engineer disappears, a former operative drags old debts into a conspiracy that weaponizes the city's infrastructure. She must race networks and men to rescue her brother and stop a manufactured crisis before a reserve node tears the city open.
Night had a way of hiding things the city refused to admit. Skyline towers threw light into the river while the PulseGrid pavilion on Dock Eleven glowed like a promise. Under the glass dome, Silas Cade smiled as cameras swiveled. The platform would stitch traffic and power into one responsive pulse — the kind of pitch that sealed investments and kept officials smiling.
Maya Koval stood at the edge of the crowd, a consultant badge at her collar but the posture of someone who had slept in a sling. She was there on a quiet assignment: a public reassurement that the system her brother helped build was safe. Ethan had been the lead on critical modules, the one who wrote low-level authentication routines and argued about biometric tolerances until midnight. He'd sent a photo of the server bay hours before the ceremony. He had promised a call. He did not call.
Cade finished a rehearsed flourish and the audience counted down. For a heartbeat the lights dimmed — a ceremonial pause — and then a sharp explosion ripped someplace sublevel. Smoke pushed out of a service hatch, alarms screamed, people surged. Security moved to protocols, ushering VIPs away. Where others fled, Maya's training steered her toward the server entrance.
The server room smelled of scorched plastic and cold metal. Technicians barked orders, fingers pointing to an emptied rack. A PulseGrid node sat on foam, its casing scuffed and smeared with unfamiliar prints. The front panel had been cleanly severed; redundant locks were bypassed. A console flashed a single, ugly line: biometric key required.
Maya found the entry log and read it twice. The timestamp matched the explosion. The user ID was her brother's. She rewound footage on a cracked monitor and watched a gloved figure move through the racks as if following rehearsed choreography. For twelve compressed seconds the thief placed the module in a case and carried it out; then a static loop replaced the camera feed. Someone had masked the removal with a network trick, refeeding an older feed while the corridor emptied.