THE BUS did not look fast.
That made it worse.
It rolled down the old freight tunnel with the steady patience of a schedule no one inside had agreed to. No driver, no escort, no public route mark. The white tunnel lights woke ahead of it in sequence, one after another, guiding it toward the clean blue door under the Annex C sign.
People hit the fogged windows from inside.
Hands, elbows, a shoe heel, and one small palm left clear patches before the glass filmed over again.
At North Rail, Jessa Venn stopped shouting.
The silence on her feed hit the safe house harder than the alarms.
"Bay Twelve," Tali said. "Soma, pull the old layout. Current maps lied."
Soma dragged three maps onto the kitchen wall and none of them agreed. Current civic showed Bay Twelve sealed after flood damage. Freight registry showed it sold to a shell warehouse eight years ago. Mercy Civic archive showed a service connector with a different name and no passenger access.
The bus kept moving.
