Delay is polite.
Denial is quiet.
The city crossed that line sometime after midnight.
Not everywhere. Not dramatically. Just enough that you could feel it if you'd been paying attention long enough—like realizing the water's getting colder only after your feet start to ache.
We noticed it first in the smallest ways.
A locked door that should've been open.A help terminal cycling endlessly through "Please Wait."A request rerouted twice, then returned unchanged.
No errors.
Just loops.
Arjun frowned at a public kiosk that refused to escalate a maintenance report."It's stuck."
"It's not," Aaryan said."It's working as designed."
The girl read the screen silently, jaw tight."They're not delaying anymore."
"No," I said."They're deciding who qualifies."
✦
We walked through a residential block where lights were uneven—some apartments dark despite the hour being early enough for activity. A man stood on a balcony arguing into his phone, voice brittle with frustration.
