The Meru spring water was bone chillingly cold, a liquid blade that cut through their tactical diving suits and bit into their skin. Beneath the sleek, silent, and perfect streets of New Arusha, a different world exhaled a claustrophobic labyrinth of reinforced concrete pipes and humming, subterranean turbines. This was the "cooling circulatory system" of the Amani Tower, a masterpiece designed by Maricha Sonoko to keep the massive, heat-generating server banks from melting under the cosmic strain of processing a continent’s worth of stolen lives.
Maricha led the way through the murk, her underwater torch casting a narrow, flickering beam against the algae-slicked walls. Behind her, Elisha kept a steady hand on his underwater propulsion spear, his eyes scanning the dark, swirling water fo
