Semua Bab Blood Ties And Silk Chains: Bab 131 - Bab 140

The Harbor Grid Zone still smelled like smoke.Sirens echoed across the waterfront as drones buzzed overhead, scanning for structural collapse. Families in soot-covered coats huddled near the repurposed shipping bay, where Liora had turned a supply depot into an emergency shelter in under two hours.“Blankets on the left,” she called out, guiding volunteers. “Water tanks stay capped until Pei checks filtration. Keep the med stations separated—clean on one side, trauma on the other.”Her hair was tied back with a scrap of gauze, sleeves rolled, palms raw from lifting debris. Every time someone tried to tell her to rest, she ignored them. She needed to move. To help. To give shape to the chaos before fear could claim the people who’d lost everything in the blast.A mother approached, clutching a trembling little boy.“Are we safe here?” the woman asked, voice cracking.Liora knelt, eye-level with the child. “Yes. No one gets through that door without going through me.”The boy blinked,

The sirens above the bunker door spun in a slow, disorienting pulse—like a heartbeat deliberately out of rhythm.Varian didn’t wait for the cycle to finish. He slammed his palm against the override plate and forced the steel doors apart with brute impatience, sparks spitting from the mechanism.Ines winced. “You know, there’s a button for that—”“She’s in here.” His voice was a blade. “Or something of her.”The corridor inside flickered. Not broken—looping. The lights stuttered in perfect intervals, almost musical.Liora felt the pattern, sensed the intelligence in the timing. Edda had always used rhythm in her coding. A tell, an ego stamp.“She’s leaving breadcrumbs,” Ines whispered. “But not to help us.”“To show off,” Bram grunted.“To warn us,” Liora corrected softly.Varian didn’t answer. His eyes were fixed straight ahead—jaw clenched, shoulders rigid, breath held as if bracing for an old ghost.They reached the inner chamber.What should have been a humming nest of servers was…

The ruined convoy still smoldered when Liora bent over the dead drone, sleeves pushed up, hands already prying open its charred casing.Bram hovered. “You sure you want your hands in that thing? It tried to incinerate you ten minutes ago.”“That’s why it owes me answers,” Liora muttered.Ines knelt on the other side, pushing aside cracked plating. “This drone was running a hybrid protocol—half municipal, half Edda’s signature. If we can find a fragment of her routing code—”“We follow it back to her nest,” Liora finished.Varian crouched beside them, burned arm stiff but eyes sharp. “Do it fast. If she’s monitoring this, she’ll shut down the unit.”“Or blow it,” Bram added.“That too,” Varian said, deadpan.Ines pulled a singed circuit cluster from the drone’s interior. “There—node memory. Most of it’s fried, but if Edda pushed commands through here, echoes might still exist.”Liora gently touched the cluster. “Can you get me into its backchannel?”Ines blinked. “You want to hack a de

The city’s blackout lasted through dawn.By the time partial grids flickered back online, Harrow District looked like it had survived a siege: markets shuttered, crowds clustered around emergency beacons, and rumors of the Harrow Reborn swarmed like flies.Varian stood at the center of the makeshift command tent erected in the old tram depot. Leaders from three rival syndicates sat at the metal table, each looking like they'd rather throw a punch than sign a truce.Soren Hale—lean, twitchy fingers, sharp jaw.Madame Rusk—elegant as ever, a silver cigarette holder resting between painted nails.The Black Lantern crew—represented by twins Jax and Jaro, big shoulders, bigger grudges.Bram leaned close to Varian. “Remind me why we invited everyone who hates us to brunch?”Varian didn’t look up from the map. “Because the city’s falling apart.”“And we’re supposed to behave like diplomats?”Varian finally lifted his eyes. They were colder than steel.“We behave like survivors.”Liora stood

The broadcast screens across the city flickered at once.Every café, every bus stop, every rooftop projector.Even the emergency lanterns in the Council’s “Red Room” buzzed as if something crawled through their circuits.Liora froze mid-sentence beside a city map.Varian straightened instantly, hand already going to the pistol he wore even in government buildings.Bram swore. “She wouldn’t dare—”Ines lifted a hand. “She would. She is.”The screens snapped from static to stark white.Then Edda’s voice filled the city—warm, lilting, wrong.“Good evening, Mayor Sable.”The room went absolutely silent.Edda’s silhouette materialized on every monitor: a digital figure made of shifting code and a woman's outline deliberately sculpted to be beautiful and unsettling. The face was smooth, expression pleasant.“And good evening, Varian Kole.”Varian stiffened.Liora stepped forward until she stood directly in front of the largest screen. “Edda, end the broadcast. The city has suffered enough.”