Morning Noway truly arrived. The timepieces claimed it had, phones recalibrated themselves with biddable perfection, and a pale argentine suggestion of daylight pressed against the upper edges of the megacity, but the darkness remained threaded through everything, a residual presence that refused to be dismissed. From the basement, Mara could feel it moving above them, flowing along thoroughfares and through structures like a slow, intelligent current, pooling where light faltered and flinching where it burned too bright. The hum had softened into commodity nearly conversational, a constant murmur beneath the scrape of thrills and the