Chairwoman Veyra kept one hand on the table while the floor moved under her.
The containment facility had been built to survive reactor failure, siege weapons, and the kind of public inquiry that arrived with lawyers instead of soldiers. None of that mattered when the cube lifted itself out of the basin and every buried support ring began reporting numbers the engineers could not explain.
An officer at the wall console clamped both hands over his headset.
"Doctor Pell says the core chamber is losing pressure, and the cube is pushing energy through the ring anchors. He wants the council evacuated before the glass fails."
Veyra looked through the reinforced window. The cube hovered above the broken basin, no longer black, no longer still. Its interior planes shifted in clean angles, folding light through themselves as if the object had remembered what it was.
Elara Cross stood two steps from the window.
"Commander, move away from the glass and return to the inner wall," Veyra said.
Elara obeyed the tone before the words finished. Soldier first, questions after. She moved back with the guards, though her attention stayed on the cube.
The comm channel cracked open with Pell's voice. "Chairwoman, the object is not destabilizing from damage; it is dividing itself, and every internal plane is becoming independent."
General Iven grabbed the table edge. "Do you mean fragments are breaking loose?"
"I mean the facility is standing around a bomb that chooses its own pieces."
Veyra turned to the guard captain. "Move everyone through the east corridor and lock the public lifts."
The cube answered before the captain could repeat the order.
A pulse passed through the facility without sound. It pressed the air flat, threw chairs sideways, and snapped three monitors off their mounts. The window held for one breath, then mapped itself with white cracks.
Elara moved toward Veyra.
Veyra saw the first shard come through the glass.
It was smaller than her hand. Clean blue. Too fast for the guards to track. It crossed the room, ignored the nearest minister, and hit Elara square in the chest.
Her boots left the floor. She struck the inner wall hard enough to dent the panel behind her and slid down with both hands locked over the point of impact.
"Medical team to the council room," Veyra said, already kneeling beside her. "Commander Cross is down, and I want her alive before anyone asks me what happened."
Elara's eyes were open. The blue fragment had sunk beneath the fabric near her right collarbone. No blood came from it. That made Veyra trust it less.
"It is inside me, and I can feel it moving under the skin," Elara said through clenched teeth.
Across the city, Elias Kael was trying to remove his father's watch before it burned through his wrist.
The pale line under his skin had reached halfway to his elbow. It did not hurt the way a burn should. It felt like pressure from the inside, as if something had found an old wire in his bones and decided to test it.
Mrs. Vale was still beside the pharmacy door. The owner had one hand on his shock baton and the other on the emergency shutter switch. People had started stepping out of apartments, drawn by the alarms and the flickering recruitment boards.
"Elias, your arm is lighting up," Mrs. Vale said.
"I noticed, but I am trying to keep the commentary professional."
The city lights cut out.
For three seconds, the street went black except for the line under Elias's skin and the billboard image of Elara frozen above the intersection. Then backup power kicked in with a weak yellow wash.
The older robber had not gone far.
He came out from behind a delivery van with the knife still in his hand. His face had changed since the first try. Less control now. More panic. The younger one followed him with a small pistol held too high, like a man who had seen guns in dramas and learned the wrong lessons.
"You saw both our faces before the blackout," the knife man said. "Then the whole city starts screaming, and your arm starts glowing. That is not a coincidence I can leave behind."
The pharmacy owner lifted the baton.
The gunman pointed at him. "Stay by the door unless you want this to spread."
Mrs. Vale backed into the pharmacy entrance. Elias stepped in front of her because his body had already made that decision once tonight and apparently wanted to be consistent.
"This is a bad time to double down on robbery," Elias said. "There are alarms, witnesses, and whatever my wrist is doing."
The knife man rushed him.
Elias caught the man's sleeve and turned with him, kitchen reflex more than fighting skill. He knew weight, timing, the exact moment a pan handle became too hot to save. The knife still found his side. It slid in under his ribs and took the strength out of his legs.
Mrs. Vale screamed his name.
Elias hit the pavement on one knee, one hand clamped over the wound. The watch burned white against his wrist.
The gunman swore. "He was not supposed to move like that."
"Shut your mouth and finish it," the knife man said. "Before every camera in the district turns back on."
The pistol shook toward Elias.
Elias should have looked at the gun. He looked at the frozen billboard instead. Elara's face stared down at the street, bright and untouchable. He thought of Dorian's photo in the study and the candle still leaving smoke in the air.
"I am sorry, Dad, because I made it weird before dinner," Elias said.
The gun fired.
The shot punched through his shoulder and spun him onto his back. People scattered. The pharmacy shutter slammed down halfway and jammed against a fallen sign.
Above the street, something whistled down between the buildings.
The robber with the pistol looked up first. That saved Elias from a second shot. A blue shard came through the dead billboard image, split the screen in two, and struck Elias in the chest.
The impact dragged him across the pavement, not far, just enough to leave a red smear beneath him. The shard sank into him without breaking skin around the entry point. Heat followed, deep and ordered, pushing against the knife wound, the bullet wound, the stopped watch.
Elias tried to breathe and found he could not decide which pain belonged to him anymore.
The robbers ran when the shard light climbed out through the blood on his shirt.
Mrs. Vale crawled under the stuck shutter and reached for him with both hands.
"Do not move him until the authority medics arrive," the pharmacy owner said.
Elias wanted to tell them that moving sounded ambitious. He wanted to ask why his father's watch had stopped at exactly 6:52.
The words did not get past his teeth.
Under his palm, something in his chest answered the city alarms with one steady pulse.