CHAPTER 9 — Collapse of Meaning
SkyDock Structural Spine / Above Vesper
The stairwell didn’t belong to any map that citizens were allowed to know.
It was narrow, bare steel with rivets too old for Vesper’s aesthetic. Its handrails were scuffed by hands that had climbed it in emergencies the city would never admit to recording. The steps were steep and uneven, engineered in a time when people still believed gravity was a negotiable inconvenience rather than a design prompt.
Red emergency lights bled down the shaft in slow pulses.
Rio ran upward, his boots converting metal echo into a rhythm that felt like heartbeats in a corpse.
Behind him, S–0 climbed without slowing. Elizabeth kept pace near Rio’s shoulder, breath tight but controlled. Elara ran last, her medical kit banging against
