The frame stopped short of the first knot and did not attack the metal in front of it. Kest set the mobile anchor on the shoulder and let the gate on it reach past Nox entirely.
The first strike arrived from a licensed gate two provinces west, a routed pulse that fell on the center lane and scattered a metered convoy. Nox read the source on his map and found no source standing on the road at all.
"He is not fighting your intersections, he is opening on them from elsewhere and closing the gate before you answer," Diana said, pinning the strike origin on the relay. "That one came off a working gate out west, and by the time I trace it the frame has picked a new one."
A second pulse fell from a northern gate and buckled a shoulder lane Jax's cutters held, then a third came from the capital line itself. Nox turned to each and each endpoint was already dark by the time his map found it.
