The operations floor had not settled from the previous collapse of signals when the next wave hit without warning. A fresh internal alert flashed across the central display, freezing half the analysts mid-action as system logs began shifting in real time. Access routes flickered between active and restricted states, as if someone inside Blackridge Tower was rewriting the rules faster than they could be tracked. Caro looked up immediately, but Peter was already standing, already reading the escalation feed, already moving before anyone could fully understand what had changed.
