Part One
Riverfall City looked like it had survived a war.
Half a district was dark. Several buildings were missing entire upper floors, not collapsed — erased. Windows were gone. Concrete edges were unnaturally smooth where material had simply ceased to exist.
Emergency sirens echoed through the night.
Police cordoned off streets. Firefighters shouted over the noise of portable generators. Ambulances moved in and out of the chaos like frantic insects.
No one understood what had happened.
Official explanations began forming within hours.
Gas explosion.
Electrical cascade failure.
Unprecedented atmospheric phenomenon.
None of them explained why surveillance footage from the entire district showed nothing but static at the exact moment the sky fractured.
None explained why every electronic device in the area recorded the same two words before shutting down:
CONNECTION RESTORED.
Far below the surface of the city, deeper than subway tunnels and sewage lines, a steel-reinforced chamber hummed with activity.
Men and women in dark uniforms stared at holographic projections of the damaged district.
A gray-haired man folded his hands behind his back.
"Energy spike magnitude?" he asked calmly.
"Off-scale, Director."
"Source?"
"Localized. Rooftop of Building 47-C."
Silence stretched across the room.
The Director's gaze hardened.
"Seal Team Theta. Deploy immediately."
"And the anomaly?"
He watched the frozen frame of a rooftop silhouette flicker on the screen.
"Bring him in alive."