Shaft 37

It’s sequence. Hospitals first, then schools, then nursing homes. They’re draining the hot zones and protecting the core. Somebody is clearing the map.” “Who is?” Marcus asked. Daniel stared at him, as if weighing how much truth a room like this could survive. At last he said, “State emergency center. Energy office too. Maybe higher.” Lin felt the floor shift under that sentence. He knew what it meant. Not one rogue decision, but a whole chain of approvals, meetings, procurement, redactions, and signatures. Disaster was never just weather. It was weather plus paperwork, weather plus silence, weather plus enough people deciding to wait. “What’s in the basement?” Erin asked.