[Ava's POV]
The betrayal by Maddox territory was a slow-acting poison in the bloodstream of the Vault. Paranoia, once a nagging whisper, became the dominant language. Every echo in a ventilation shaft was a footfall, every power flicker a precursor to an assault.
The fortress mentality had curdled into something darker: the certain knowledge that the walls were no longer a boundary between them and the world, but a cage holding them in with the coming storm.
The attack, when it materialized, was a masterpiece of minimalist horror. Not a pack, not a gang. A single contractor. A ghost-for-hire paid from the first tranche of Council silver, a professional who understood that value lay in information and silence, not in noise.
He had used the leaked topographical data to find a geologica
