The Architects’ bypass wasn’t just another tunnel hidden beneath the city’s skin—it was a wild, frictionless chute of white, a sensory onslaught that felt less like movement and more like being detonated through pure energy. Carter, Lena, and Jax didn’t so much travel as they were transmitted, bodies stretched thin, nerves singing with static as they shot westward—five hundred miles in under five minutes. There was no stone, no steel—just the relentless surge of what the Architects called “Light-Data,” the raw code of the city’s nervous system. It carried them like signals, compressing their realities until the world snapped back into focus in a blur so violent it left their stomachs reeling and their vision smeared with ghosts.
And before they could even draw breath, they were dropped st
