No one celebrated the Load Test.

  That silence should have warned them.

  Normally a near?miss cracked the air openTony’s laugh booming first, Lenny twisting the moment into something sideways, Arthur masking relief behind clipped data. This time the tension only thinned, never snapped, a wire drawn past its yield point and left humming.

  The station eased into its usual crawl. Trains slid in and out. Commuters flowed. The lift remained stubbornly slow.

  Still alive.

  Cameron felt the new pressure thrumming through his staff a low, persistent note that hadn’t existed an hour ago. Not threat. Not heat.

  Attention.

  Tony rolled his shoulders. “I hate this part.”

  Arthur flicked his gaze from the tablet. “Which part?”

  “The part where nothing blows up and I still want to duck.”

  Lenny was already moving up the wall.

  Not climbing. Probing.

  He pushed off once, boots brushing tile, then higher, body canting sideways as if gravity had loosened its grip just for him. He hung there a breath, testing.

  Arthur’s voice cut sharp. “Don’t...”

  Lenny let go. Knees took the landing late; the floor seemed to wait for him.

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  “It’s different,” he said. “The gaps are closing.”

  Cameron met his eyes. “Closing how?”

  “The city’s not spacing the hits anymore.” Lenny’s grin carried no humor. “One problem used to give you room to breathe. Now they stack. Not breaking us yet. Just stacking.”

  Tony’s frown deepened. “That sounds bad.”

  “It’s efficient,” Lenny answered. “That’s worse.”

  They stepped into the street.

  London had tightened.

  Not hostile organized. Traffic threaded itself with unnatural courtesy. Pedestrians moved like pieces on a board someone else was sliding. A billboard cycled alerts too quickly to read, each message polite, urgent, gone.

  Cameron stopped.

  Tony took two more strides before noticing. “What?”

  Cameron nodded across the road.

  A community repair crew worked a burst water main. Bright vests, hand tools, makeshift barriers. The fix looked nearly complete.

  Nearly.

  Lenny cocked his head. “That pipe’s starving.”

  Arthur scanned his tablet. “Pressure nominal.”

  “Won’t be in thirty seconds.”

  The crew tightened the last coupling.

  The streetlamp overhead flickered.

  Once.

  Cameron moved.

  “Tony.”

  Tony was already running.

  He vaulted the barrier, hammer rising. Cameron slammed the staff down, pouring weight into the pavement not to stop the surge but to confuse it. Asphalt dipped; water hesitated, searching for direction.

  The coupling gave anyway.

  Clean. Surgical.

  A jet sliced sideways, caught a worker at the knees, drove him down. The stream struck the transformer housing low and hard.

  Arthur swore. “That box isn’t sealed.”

  Lenny launched.

  Boots flared against nothing; he twisted mid?air and slapped the casing, palm sticking as gravity peeled away in ribbons. He clung there, sideways spider.

  “Thirty seconds,” he called. “Maybe less.”

  Tony’s hammer came down beside the transformer, not on it. The blow shattered concrete into runoff channels, giving the flood cheaper paths.

  Cameron stepped into the spray. Heat bled out of him, low and sour, staff grinding deeper. The lining howled, but the surge bent, spread, lost its edge.

  The transformer tripped.

  Power died clean.

  Lights vanished. Emergency strips glowed to life.

  Wet silence fell.

  The workers stared.

  One found his voice. “Who the hell are you people?”

  Cameron didn’t answer.

  He was watching the street.

  Three blocks down, a lamp flickered.

  Then another.

  Arthur’s tablet began to sing short chirps stacking into a steady alarm.

  “This isn’t cascade,” he said, voice thin. “It’s sequencing.”

  Tony looked up, grin sharp and joyless. “They’re spreading us thin.”

  Lenny dropped from the casing, boots skidding through puddles. “They’re forcing choices.”

  A distant alarm whooped once and cut off.

  Not sirens yet.

  Cameron felt it settle over him like a hand on the back of the neck the same pressure as the lift, the corridor, the Load Test.

  The system had stopped watching.

  It was arranging.

  Tony hefted the hammer across his shoulder. “So. Who wants which fire?”

  Cameron’s knuckles whitened on the staff.

  The city shifted again, smooth and deliberate, opening fresh gaps before the old ones had sealed.

  “Stay close,” he said.

  They couldn’t.

  The streets parted them like careful fingers.

  The system noted the response.

  It logged the reaction time.

  It did not record who reached which break first.

  It simply watched how far they had to run.