They felt it before they saw it.

  A low thump, deep enough to sit in the bones. Not an explosion. Not yet. Pressure being asked to go somewhere and finding the answer unsatisfactory.

  Arthur’s tablet lagged, then snapped back with too much information. His breath caught.

  “They didn’t just reroute the gates,” he said. “They locked the manual overrides.”

  Tony laughed once, sharp. “Of course they did.”

  The river answered for them.

  Water surged against the embankment, higher than it should’ve been, slapping concrete with flat, angry force. Spray arced up and misted the air. A warning light along the rail flickered from green to amber to red and stayed there, buzzing like it wanted attention.

  People noticed this time.

  Phones came up. Someone shouted. Someone else laughed, like it was content.

  Cameron stepped to the edge and planted the staff.

  The hum changed pitch. Higher. Tighter. The staff wasn’t pulling anymore. It was resisting, like a beam under load.

  “They’re compressing the city,” Cameron said. “Stacking stress until something vents.”

  Lenny bounced on his heels, boots jittering as gravity stuttered. “Yeah. And they picked water. Classic.”

  Another thump rolled through the ground.

  The flood gate shuddered.

  Metal screamed.

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  Arthur went pale. “If that gate goes, it doesn’t flood the road. It floods the sublevels. Power, data everything below grade.”

  Tony swung the hammer up onto his shoulder. “Cool. So we stop it.”

  Cameron shook his head. “We can’t stop it.”

  Tony blinked. “Cam”

  “We redirect it,” Cameron said. “If we block the vent, it just finds another one.”

  Tony squinted. “Harder.”

  “Messier,” Arthur finished, already scrolling.

  The gate buckled inward, just a fraction. Enough to make the crowd gasp.

  Lenny’s grin spread, wild and delighted. “So we give it a better exit.”

  Arthur stared at him. “You’re suggesting controlled failure.”

  “Yes,” Cameron said.

  Arthur opened his mouth. Closed it. Then: “No. You’re suggesting intentional damage to Guild infrastructure.”

  Tony shrugged. “He means art.”

  The pressure spiked again.

  This time the gate tore loose.

  Not fully. One side gave, twisting metal like wet cardboard. Water punched through the gap a white, roaring column exploding outward.

  People screamed.

  Tony moved.

  He didn’t think. He never did when it mattered.

  The hammer hit the concrete at the base of the embankment and the shockwave rippled outward, flattening the first surge just enough to keep it from sweeping the crowd off their feet. Water slapped instead of slammed.

  Lenny was already running.

  He hit the railing, boots flaring bright as gravity lost the argument. He ran up the spray, bounding across the falling water like it was a staircase someone had forgotten to finish.

  “Lenny!” Arthur shouted. “That’s not”

  “Rated?” Lenny finished, laughing. “Yeah. I know.”

  Cameron stepped forward, staff glowing now not hot, but dense. He drove it into the twisted gate frame and felt the stress scream back at him, every vibration a story of shortcuts and deferred maintenance.

  He pushed.

  Metal bent.

  Not snapped. Bent. Slow. Deliberate.

  He widened the breach.

  Arthur’s voice cracked. “Cameron, if you open it more”

  “The pressure drops,” Cameron said. “The surge spreads instead of punches.”

  Water roared through the expanded gap, violent but wider, less focused. It flooded the service channel instead of the sublevels, rushing where old spillways had been sealed and forgotten.

  The city groaned.

  Then settled.

  Cameron felt it through the staff like a spine realigning.

  People stood ankle-deep, soaked and shaking.

  Alive.

  Phones were everywhere now.

  Tony looked around, chest heaving. “Tell me they saw that.”

  “They saw us,” Arthur said quietly.

  Lenny dropped back down, boots sparking as gravity caught up all at once. He stumbled, laughed, nearly fell, then steadied himself.

  “Okay,” he said, breathless. “That felt very illegal.”

  Cameron pulled the staff free.

  The hum faded to a low ache.

  Across the river, warning lights cascaded as systems caught up late, recalculating costs they hadn’t planned to pay.

  Arthur’s tablet chimed.

  Once.

  Then again.

  Then it wouldn’t stop.

  “Secondary failures,” he said. “They’re popping up along the reroute. The load’s—”

  He swallowed. “Bouncing.”

  Tony grinned, feral. “We shook the table.”

  Cameron didn’t smile.

  He watched the water spilling where it wasn’t supposed to. The crowd filming. The city adjusting around a wound it had just been forced to acknowledge.

  “No,” he said. “We taught it where to bleed.”

  Arthur’s tablet flashed a new header.

  The header resolved into a classification.

  The air above the embankment began to move.

  Small lights lifted from rooftops along the river in measured intervals, spacing themselves with quiet precision. Their motion traced a pattern Cameron didn’t recognize, but the staff did, tension tightening along its length as the formation settled.

  A thin, electric whine layered through the space, overlapping into a steady pressure that pressed down on the crowd without touching them.

  The drones took position.