Charlotte Soladorn watched the data on a portable screen, her face a grimace of furious disbelief. The null-field projector hung at her side, useless against this insubstantial attack. "This is nonsense! Organized noise!"
Rex Aurelian appeared at the shaft entrance, his optimism finally shattered. "Charlotte, the output! The pure Vitae flow has dropped by forty percent! The energy grid is fluctuating across three sectors! We have to shut it down, hard reboot the Core!"
"Shut what down, Rex?" she snarled. "The Core is now a feedback loop between their cacophony and our containment protocols! There is no 'off' switch that doesn't involve collapsing the shaft!"
Regina's voice was calm ice over the comms. "Analysis: The unauthorized frequencies are creating a stabilizing interference pattern around the entropy mass. It is containing the spread. Consequence: Primary extraction is compromised. Conclusion: We must physically eliminate the source of the interference."
Her words hung in the air. Physically eliminate. The enforcers raised their kinetic rifles, aiming past Charlotte at the people clustered around the resonators.
Lysander stepped in front of them, his hands spread. "Shoot us, and you sever the only thing holding the corruption in check. The second our song stops, the cascade resumes. You'll be firing at your own last shield."
The lead enforcer hesitated, looking to Charlotte.
Roxana pushed her way through then, her hair escaping its severe bindings. She looked at the monitors, at the swirling, contained corruption, then at the resonators and the desperate people holding them. Her usual sarcasm was absent, replaced by a stark, calculating clarity.
"He's not wrong," she said, her voice quiet but cutting through the noise. "Look at the entropy density. It's… caged. By this ridiculous choir." She turned to Charlotte, a strange, almost respectful light in her eyes. "You wanted to weaponize it. They've just demonstrated a better containment protocol. By accident."
"We are not taking tactical advice from saboteurs and sanitation workers!" Charlotte roared.
"We're taking survival advice from observable facts!" Roxana shot back, a lifetime of indirect resistance finally going direct. "You're so focused on controlling the scream, you're going to let it burn the house down. They're not controlling it. They're… arguing with it. And they're winning the argument."