The air in the Kane Building's command center was thick with the low-grade hum of stress. Scarlett stood over the main holographic table, her finger tracing supply lines into Zone Crimson. Alexander was across from her, his brow furrowed as he reviewed casualty reports. The silence between them was professional, efficient, and brittle. The weight of leadership and the ghost of his abdicated authority lay unspoken between every word.
Suddenly, the primary comms console erupted not with sound, but with light. A violent, static-laced burst of golden energy shot from the speakers, coalescing above the table into a flickering, unstable hologram. It was Elena Vasquez, but she was translucent, her form wavering like a ghost. The background behind her was a nightmare landscape of swirling grey mist and jagged, dark structures that seemed to absorb the light.
