Chairwoman Veyra kept one hand flat on the council table while the floor shifted under her shoes.
The containment facility had survived reactor drills, siege simulations, and seven audits where ministers shouted harder than soldiers. Those plans meant little once the cube lifted itself out of the basin and every buried support ring began sending numbers the engineers refused to read aloud.
An officer at the wall console clamped both hands over his headset.
"Doctor Pell says the core chamber is losing pressure while the cube pushes energy through the ring anchors. He wants the council evacuated before the glass fails."
Veyra looked through the reinforced window.
The cube hovered above the broken basin. Its black surface had opened into angled inner planes. Light bent through those planes in hard slices, turning the dust below it bright, then dark, then bright again.
Elara Cross stood two steps from the window with her hands relaxed at her sides, measuring the thing instead of flinching from it.
"Commander, move away from the glass and return to the inner wall," Veyra said.
Elara moved before the sentence ended. Training moved her first. Questions could wait until the ceiling stayed up. The guards followed her, though every face in the room kept drifting back to the basin.
The comm channel broke open with Pell's voice. "Chairwoman, the object is not destabilizing from the strike damage. The internal planes are separating, and each section is carrying its own energy field."
General Iven gripped the table edge. "Are fragments breaking loose from the object now?"
"I am saying our facility is wrapped around a machine that is deciding how many pieces it wants to become."
Veyra turned to the guard captain. "Move everyone through the east corridor and seal the public lifts behind us."
The order died under the next pulse.
No sound came with it. Pressure flattened the room. Chairs slid sideways. Three monitors snapped from their mounts and hit the floor hard enough to burst casings. The reinforced window held for one strained breath, then filled with white cracks.
Elara moved toward Veyra.
Veyra saw the shard a heartbeat before impact.
It was small and blue, cutting straight through the cracked glass while the guards were still trying to aim at the window.
It ignored the ministers between them and struck Elara below the right collarbone.
Her boots left the floor. She hit the inner wall with a heavy metal sound and dropped with both hands locked over her chest.
Veyra reached her first because fear made the room slow and anger made Veyra fast.
"Medical team to the central council room immediately," she said. "Commander Cross is down, and anyone who asks for an incident label before she breathes answers to me."
Elara's eyes stayed open.
The fragment sat under her uniform, not in it. No blood spread through the fabric. That was worse. Blood meant the body still owned the wound.
Elara's jaw tightened. "It is moving under my skin, and I do not have a command for that."
Across the city, Elias Kael tried to tear his father's watch off before it burned through his wrist.
The pale line under his skin had climbed halfway to his elbow. The sensation was not heat anymore. It was pressure, deep and organized, traveling along places inside his arm he had never thought about before tonight.
Mrs. Vale stood beside the pharmacy entrance with one hand pressed to her chest. Korrin had his shock baton out and his other hand hovering over the emergency shutter switch. People had started opening apartment windows. A few stepped onto balconies despite the alarms, because curiosity and self-preservation had never learned to cooperate.
"Elias, your arm is lighting up under your sleeve," Mrs. Vale said.
"I saw that part and decided not to advertise it."
The city lights cut out.
The street dropped into black, except for the line under Elias's skin and Elara's recruitment image frozen above the intersection. Backup power came three seconds later, weak and yellow, turning every face older.
The older robber had not run far enough.
He came out from behind a delivery van with the folding knife still in his hand. The younger one followed with a small pistol held too high, elbows locked like he had learned from posters instead of recoil.
The knife man looked at Elias's arm, then at the blackout, then at the people gathering behind half-open doors.
"You saw our faces before the city went dark," he said. "Now your arm is doing that, and I am done trusting coincidences."
Korrin lifted the baton.
The younger robber pointed the pistol at him. "Stay beside the door unless you want this problem to spread into your shop."
Mrs. Vale backed into the pharmacy entrance.
Elias stepped in front of her.
He hated how quick his body was to volunteer him.
"This is a terrible time to become more memorable," Elias said. "There are alarms, witnesses, and whatever medical disaster my wrist is hosting."
The knife man rushed him.
Elias caught the sleeve and turned with him. Kitchen movement, not combat. Weight, timing, hot-pan instinct, the simple knowledge that bodies kept moving after hands changed direction. It almost worked.
The knife slid under his ribs, and his legs weakened at once while Mrs. Vale shouted his name.
Elias hit one knee, hand clamped over the wound. His watch turned white against his wrist, so bright it showed bone shape through skin.
The younger robber swore. "He should not have moved like that after getting cut."
"Finish him before the cameras come back online," the knife man said. "Do it now while everyone nearby is hiding."
The pistol swung toward Elias, but his attention went to the billboard before sense could pull it back.
Elara's face stared down from the broken recruitment board, polished beyond anything real. He thought of Dorian's photo in the study, the candle smoke, and the groceries he had still managed to fail buying.
"Sorry about dinner, Dad, because I made it weird before I got to eat it."
The pistol fired.
Pain tore through his shoulder and spun him onto his back. People scattered. The pharmacy shutter slammed down halfway, hit a fallen sign, and stuck there rattling.
Something came down between the buildings.
The gunman looked up first. That saved Elias from the second shot.
A blue shard split the billboard through Elara's face, dropped through the dead screen, and struck Elias in the chest.
The impact dragged him across the pavement. It dragged him far enough to leave blood under him in a crooked line. The shard sank in without ripping the skin around it, which made no sense and hurt anyway.
Heat followed, deep and ordered and rude enough to feel personal.
It pushed against the knife wound, the bullet wound, and the stopped watch until Elias could not tell which pain had arrived first.
The robbers ran when pale light climbed through the blood on his shirt.
Mrs. Vale crawled under the stuck shutter and reached for him with both hands.
"Keep him flat until authority medics arrive, because that light is not something we should touch barehanded," Korrin said.
Elias wanted to tell them that moving sounded ambitious. He wanted to ask why his father's watch had stopped at exactly 6:52.
The words stayed behind his teeth.
Under his palm, something in his chest answered the city alarms with one steady pulse.