Water in Shaft 37

Lin didn’t move. He stared at Harper and realized, for the first time, what made people like this dangerous. It wasn’t that they were emotionless. It was that they genuinely believed they had already done everything possible. The alarm tone thickened. On the screen, the fire was crawling toward the gas node. Districts kept turning red as if the map itself had caught fever. “Give me the source data,” Lin said. Harper watched him. “You want to make it public?” “I want to know what else you hid.” “If you release it, the outer districts will collapse completely.” “They already have.” The two men held each other’s gaze for a few seconds. Finally, Harper pushed the tablet over.