The dark silhouette of the Nova Technologies shuttle slid through the gray cloud layer over Mexico City with an eerie, total silence.
Below, the massive, sprawling urban footprint of the valley emerged, a dense grid of concrete and steel stretching toward the mountains under the morning sun.
At Benito Juárez International Airport, the standard rhythm of global transit had been completely derailed. Tarmac areas surrounding Terminal 2 were entirely cleared of commercial aircraft, cordoned off by heavy lines of federal police and military personnel in tactical gear.
The perimeter fencing was buried under an immense, sea-of-people crowd that had been gathering since the previous night. Millions more were watching live feeds on LucidNet, their pages refreshing so quickly that the platform's localized servers were dynamically pulling maximum bandwidth to prevent a regional lag.
