Five years earlier
The first concert after the rebellion was a hit.
Adam knew it before anyone told him, before the reviews appeared on the internet, and before the palace-approved entertainment channels cut his best notes into thirty-second loops and pumped them through the city's communication towers like a heartbeat.
Two years.
Two years of the new regime under Damian Lyon, two years of officials in black and gold trying to stabilize a country that had been cracked open and stitched back together with ether lines and blood and paperwork.
Two years of rationing, of curfews, of tightened wards around government buildings, of the quiet hum of reconstruction running under everything like a second heartbeat.
And now, finally, music.
