Fault lines don’t crack all at once.
They whisper first.
I feel it in the days that follow the subtle shifts, the almosts. Accounts delayed instead of frozen, Meetings postponed instead of canceled. Meridian isn’t retreating.
They’re recalculating.
Which means they’ve accepted one thing:
I’m no longer removable without cost.
That makes me dangerous.
And danger demands escalation.
It starts with a name.
A minor official. Someone unimportant enough to forget.
Until I realize he’s been quietly rewriting zoning permissions around Andrea’s medical facility. Not shutting it down, Not attacking it.
Isolating it.
Slow suffocation.
That’s Meridian’s signature.
I don’t tell Valen right away.
Not because I don’t trust him,but because I know him.
He’d burn the city to stop this.
And I
