The Fragment in the Rain

That day's wound in the world was simple to describe and hard to survive: A core fragment bonds with kieran during a rain-soaked delivery and teaches his nerves to read impossible energy. The sentence looked clean in Amara's notes later. It did not look clean in the street. It looked like wet concrete, frightened families, half-charged phones, and the cruel efficiency of people who had prepared for disaster before disaster had a public name. Kieran arrived without a plan complete enough to deserve the word. He had a location, three warnings, one unreliable power response, and a growing certainty that the people behind the crisis had studied him more carefully than he had studied himself.