PULSE

  PROLOGUE

  The node wasn't supposed to keep time.

  But it did — deliberate, measured, almost playful — pulsing green across Griffydd Hale's face in the pre-dawn dark of Neon Spire's maintenance floor. Rain fell in sheets outside, blurring streetlights into halos. Cables ran over concrete in snarled loops, frayed ends spitting static whenever rainwater found the wrong seam.

  A shape filled the doorway.

  Valley, coat dripping, grin already forming. His eyes worked at the same time, scanning the room the way engineers scanned failures: quietly, precisely, without drama.

  "You sleep here now?" Valley said.

  "I like to see the first ripple," Griff replied without looking away from the screen. "Before anyone panics."

  Valley stepped closer and tapped a loose cable with his wrench. The sound came back wrong. Damped. Like something beneath the floor was listening.

  "Watching's fine," Valley said, fingers tapping an unconscious rhythm against the handle. "You're tuned too tight. Stuff like this snaps when you stare at it too hard."

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  Griff didn't answer.

  Whatever lived under the city wasn't supposed to reach this high.

  It always did, eventually.

  The pulse quickened. One beat, then another.

  Like a heartbeat getting excited.

  Elin Morgan stepped through the door behind Valley and stopped. Not scanning the room — reading Griff's posture. Then she crossed directly to him, ignoring the water pooling around the cables.

  Griff's shoulders dropped half an inch when she came in. One more pair of eyes on the room meant one less variable to track.

  "You're poking it again," Elin said.

  "Stabilising," Griff replied.

  Valley leaned over the monitor. The tapping never quite stopped. "Patterns like this don't drift," he said. "They keep time. Miss it, and you get dropped."

  Elin's gaze flicked to Griff's hands — the careful hover instead of contact. "You're obsessed."

  "Someone has to be."

  Neon bled through cracked windows, painting puddles electric blue and sick pink. Griff saw the city the way he always had: a board that kept playing long after the players were gone. Drones as pieces. Humans as pawns. The Shadows as the last ones still moving.

  The CRT blinked.

  A single tag appeared in blocky text:

  GLOWWORM SECTOR

  Then it vanished.

  Valley's grin sharpened, then faltered. "That's off."

  The screen blinked once—

  —and went dark.

  A clean cut. No flicker. No failure.

  Silence swallowed the room so completely Griff felt it in his teeth. Rain still fell. Breath still worked.

  Yet the city's underside had gone quiet in the way predators did just before they moved.

  Something had noticed them.

  And somewhere below Neon Spire, the Hollow opened its eyes.