Jim had his hands on his knees for a moment, catching his breath in a way I had never seen from him before, he had come in at full speed and it showed. He straightened after a few seconds and adjusted his glasses.
"The barrier works." He said, his tone still tight from the run. "At least on the sections I was able to see. The barrier covers the city almost entirely." He paused, something uneasy slipping into his expression. "But I think there was a problem we did not anticipate."
Kira went still beside me.
"The barriers grew from inside the largest buildings outward." Jim continued, his voice settling back into its usual measured cadence as his breathing evened out. "Which means whatever Corruptors were sheltering inside those structures got pushed out by the expanding field. Every single one of them. The outer perimeter of the city is now lined with hundreds of Corruptors. I have never seen that many."
The word hundreds sat between us.
