Location:Seven Peaks — Multiple
Date/Time:TC1855.03.01-10
The mountain didn't know what had happened in the corridor.
Thirty-five thousand people went about their lives — the training schedules, the workcamps, the school, the Innovation Forge, the Medicine Hall branches producing pills and treating patients and training apprentices. The formation network hummed. The Open Ledger displayed its numbers. The communal kitchens served meals. The children played in the gardens. The living architecture grew.
The corridor had been cleaned. The ash removed. The scorch mark scrubbed from the wall by a maintenance crew who'd been told that a formation node had misfired during routine testing. The formation-dampened walls showed no evidence of what had happened. The scanner in the walls continued its quiet listening. The living wood of the Verdant Spire, which had flared to alarm-white and screamed through its roots, had returned to its steady amber glow as if nothing had disturbed it.
