Ringcut
Kristina Warlen Published on: 05/08/2025
Exit moved in silence through the black zone. The road beneath his boots was fractured and blistered from a century of stress fractures, chemical erosion, and neglect. Every surface held the residue of failure. Surveillance nodes blinked faintly in the walls above him. Pale red eyes stared from cracked housing. They still tracked motion and still read heat. Power to the district had been cut hours ago. The Network never really died. It idled, quiet and watchful. It waited for patterns to reestablish.
Fiction
