Pāhonoa te oro

Not a fluctuation—a cut. Clean and deliberate, the kind that took infrastructure knowledge and a wire at a specific junction box. The backup generator caught the critical equipment, but the surgical light above Seo-hyun's table blinked twice and died, and in the half-second before the emergency strip lighting kicked on, Seo-jun heard the specific quality of silence that meant something had gone wrong that money could not immediately fix. Maria's voice came from the center of the room, flat and a