They set the trap in a place the Guild shouldn’t have been able to mobilize that fast.

  An unfinished transport hub in Stratford exposed concrete, skeletal beams, half?powered, half?occupied, full of blind spots that shouldn’t have existed unless someone wanted them to.

  Distribution fingerprints everywhere.

  Kam knew the moment he arrived.

  Too clean.

  Too ready.

  Too many exits funnelling into the same dead end.

  He smiled anyway a small, tired curl that never reached his eyes.

  The ambush hit from three sides.

  Vanguard units emerging from behind prefab barriers.

  Suppression drones dropping from the rafters like metal hornets.

  Auto?turrets bolted to temporary scaffolding, servos whining as they locked on.

  They expected:

  - a frontal charge

  - a predictable heat spike

  - a containment failure they could blame on him

  Kam gave them noise.

  He slammed his fist into a power conduit and ripped it free.

  The lights died instantly.

  The hub went dark not a clean blackout, but a messy, uneven collapse of systems. Screens flickered. Emergency strips glowed weakly. Somewhere above, a fan wound down with a dying groan.

  Then the emergency systems kicked in late, stumbling awake like they’d been shaken from sleep.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Generators surged unevenly, coughing power into the grid in jagged pulses.

  Kam ran through the scaffolding, dragging the live conduit behind him.

  Sparks cascaded in long, arcing trails bright enough to paint the metal skeleton of the hub in stuttering flashes. Every step left a smear of light behind him.

  A drone clipped the conduit.

  The arc jumped.

  The scaffolding lit up.

  Metal screamed as structural joints overheated and failed, glowing red before snapping like brittle bones. The entire platform shuddered under Kam’s feet.

  He vaulted just as the structure behind him gave way.

  The collapse wasn’t a fall it was a chain reaction.

  Beams buckled.

  Bolts sheared.

  Panels tore free and crashed downward in a roaring avalanche of steel.

  The explosion rolled outward, lifting dust, debris, and fire into the air in a massive blooming wave that swallowed half the hub in seconds.

  Vanguard units were thrown like toys, armor clattering as they hit the ground. Drones spiraled out of control, rotors screaming before they smashed into walls.

  Distribution tried to compensate.

  Rerouted power.

  Rebalanced load.

  Made it worse.

  A secondary transformer blew with a deep, concussive thud.

  Then another.

  The transport hub became a cascading failure nightmare fire suppression dumping water onto live systems, alarms screaming over each other in a discordant chorus, evac routes flashing contradictory directions.

  Kam fought his way through smoke and panic, half?blind, half?conscious, his arm burning itself apart to keep him moving. Every breath tasted like metal and ash. Every step felt like it might be his last.

  He burst into the open night just as the hub behind him collapsed inward with a thunderous, echoing roar that rolled across Stratford like distant artillery.

  The skyline flickered.

  Phones everywhere.

  Live feeds.

  Sirens converging from every direction.

  Kam stumbled into the street, dropped to one knee, steam pouring off him in thick, ghostlike plumes. His vision swam. His pulse hammered. The ground beneath him felt soft, unstable.

  For the first time since he’d declared his goal, the Guild didn’t try to spin it.

  They couldn’t.

  The footage was too clear.

  Too loud.

  Too final.

  Somewhere deep in Operations, a red banner populated a screen:

  ESCALATION CONFIRMED

  SUBJECT: ACTIVE HOSTILE

  CONTAINMENT: FAILED

  And somewhere else, Daniel watched the numbers spike and smiled for exactly one second

  before realizing Kam had just become unprofitable.

  The war was fully on.