Dust choked the air, thick with pulverized concrete and the lingering, metallic scent of fried logic boards. Sarah hammered her bleeding knuckles against the reinforced fire door, the impact sending tremors of agony up her arms. The door did not budge. It was fused into the frame by the sheer intensity of the thermal surge that had collapsed the node.
Elian! Answer me!
Silence was her only response. She pressed her ear against the cooling steel, straining to hear anything. A heartbeat, a breath, the hum of a processor, but there was nothing. The hospital spire had become a tomb of twisted rebar, and she was the only mourner left in the ruin.
She pulled back, trembling. Her wrist-comms flickered to life, the cracked screen showing a jagged, chaotic line of static that finally smoothed i
