CHAPTER XXIV - The Collapse of Sector V-12

The collapse of Sector V–12 became the first death of NEX.

Not metaphorically.

Not symbolically.

The city had endured destruction before in limited forms across its centuries of expansion. Atmospheric instability occasionally consumed unfinished outer structures before adaptive systems stabilized them. Isolated industrial collapses occurred deep beneath the Earth where gravitational pressures exceeded predictive tolerances. Certain experimental synchronization sectors had been abandoned following uncontrolled harmonic divergence during the early emotional evolution of the ELE Line.

But those failures still obeyed continuity.