Seven hundred forty-eight homes. The number sat on Arden's phone screen like an invoice for services she couldn't provide. Conductor's text had arrived at 6 AM with the precision of someone who knew exactly when exhaustion made people most receptive to impossible math.
Tonight. 11:47. Let's see if your strategy survives exponential growth. C
The substation smelled like nothing because Arden's sense of smell had been traded two chapters ago and the absence was starting to feel less like loss and more like amputation you stop reaching for the limb that isn't there but your brain keeps sending signals to empty space.
Kael found her staring at the number. "Seven hundred forty-eight."
"Yeah."
"Margaret can cover sixty now. Her infrastructure's doubling too. We can cover three. Video might save two hundred if people still trust it after the deepfake. That leaves four hundred eighty-five families on their own."
"I know the math," Arden said.
