The freezing rain over London did not simply fall; it swept across the jagged stone spires of Tower Bridge and dissolved into the muddy, slate-gray currents of the Thames. To the human population commuting through the rain-slicked streets of the financial district, the quiet industrial brick warehouse complex along the docks of Wapping was nothing more than an abandoned print-house awaiting redevelopment. Its automated entry points and surveillance arrays had been thoroughly wiped and re-calibrated by the Orion Directorate's quantum mainframes, turning the entire perimeter into a complete digital vacuum.
But behind the reinforced steel pressure doors and the multi-layered acoustic insulation grids, the facility had been transformed into the primary European hub for Kiara's expanding empir
