CHAPTER 16 — After the Equation
Maintenance Tunnels → Underway Concourse → Treaty Ground Verge
The maintenance tunnel was never meant to carry a hundred children.
It was built for coolant lines and civic waste, for technician carts and emergency routing when prettier systems failed. Its ceiling was low enough that adults stooped. Its walls sweated under the Arcology’s heat. Its floor was ribbed with old grip plates that clicked under small shoes like teeth.
Yet it carried them anyway.
Because the city had always been held together by what it never meant to hold.
Rio walked at the front with Elizabeth and S–0, Elara behind him threading the children through the narrow corridor in clusters of ten. She made a moving perimeter without weapons—her voice, her hands, her calm in the dark.
