CHAPTER 15 — The Equation Writes Itself
Crown Nursery / Below SkyDock 71
Falling never feels like it does in dreams.
Dreams make it fluid, weightless, like you’re gently being unhooked from the world.
This was not that.
This was metal and air slamming past, the shaft a cold throat dropping them through the Arcology’s spine. Rio counted the seconds automatically, the way his training had wired him to do in any uncontrolled descent.
One. Two. Three—
He felt the air pressure change around them, thickening into a cushion as old Underway dampers woke on proximity.
There—
A magnetic ring flared below, visible only as a faint, shimmering circle. It caught their bodies in a soft brute grip, flipping their vectors, bleeding momentum like a hand catching thrown glass.
They hit a flex-mesh
