Chapter 24: Arming the Fortress
The city center feeds flickered out one after another, leaving banks of monitors filled with gray static as the transmission lines collapsed under the weight of the ice. Rowan Mercer stood before the central console in the Alderwood command hub, his hands resting lightly on the edge of the steel desk. On the surviving monitors, the streets of the commercial district were empty of moving cars, marked only by abandoned sedans buried under drifts and the occasional desperate shape running toward an alleyway.
The time for observation was over. The freeze had arrived, and the perimeter needed to seal before the temperature drop breached the secondary thermal buffers.
Rowan reached out, flipped open the red acrylic protective casing on the main console, and pre
