First Fans and the First Crack

Every platform knew exactly what a surprise disaster like that meant for traffic. The chat went feral: ["It’s about to burn."] ["He can’t stop that."] ["This is over."] Aiden did not retreat. He planted the shield in the ground, pressed both hands against a loosened metal drain near the court, and pulled together everything he had learned from the pump site two days earlier. Not a brute block. He fed the drain’s leftover vibration, the pressure stored in the fire hose, and even the tiny amount of kinetic energy left behind by running students into the same threshold, then released it all at once. What burst open was not fire. It was a forced detour of force.