The city had turned into a giant, forced clockwork.
They called it "Compression," and if you just looked at the charts, it seemed to be working. The whole place had been beaten down into this predictable, mechanical hum. By bottlenecking the streets and tightening their control, the brass had managed to funnel the usual human traffic into these narrow, rigid lanes. Everything was tracked, logged, and filed, leaving zero room for the kind of gray areas that usually keep a city breathing. For a minute there, it actually looked stable—decisive, even perfect, if you're into that kind of thing.
But under that clean coat of paint, Elias could feel the whole structure starting to get brittle.
Looking at the city now, he didn't see "order"—he saw stress lines. It was like watching cracks spread across thin ice. Back in the day, the natural chaos of the city acted like a shock absorber; when things went wrong, the mess soaked up the impact. Now, with everything so stiff, every tiny tremor traveled straight to the top. A five-minute delay wasn't just a nuisance anymore; it was a total system crash. They'd traded the city's soul for a bit of efficiency, and now the whole thing had forgotten how to bend. It could only break.
Elias didn't just stand on the sidelines; he decided to shove a wrench in the gears.
He started taking the restricted routes, purposely following orders that he knew didn't make a lick of sense. He let the bureaucracy swallow him up, acting like a grain of sand meant to grind the engine down from the inside. The friction started as a whisper. A train stalled a few seconds too long. Some clerk hesitated, waiting for a green light that was a heartbeat late. Small bad calls started stacking up until time itself felt like the enemy.
The first real snap happened at a checkpoint near the main drag.
Two guards were huddled over a tablet, arguing in low, angry voices. The rule they were looking at wasn't the problem—the rule was clear as day. The problem was that "Compression" had sucked all the common sense out of the room, and they didn't know how to actually apply the damn thing. One of them, looking like he hadn't slept in a week, just waved a group through with a frustrated flick of his wrist. The second he did, the other guard grabbed the next guy in line for the same thing, citing the code with this weird, desperate confidence.
It was an embarrassing mess, and it was happening right out in the open.
The crowd didn't start a riot. It was worse than that—they went dead quiet. People stopped staring at their shoes and actually started watching. You could feel the shift: the authorities were being forced to explain themselves in the middle of the street, and they were coming up blank.
Elias didn't stick around for the fallout. He ducked into a side alley, leaving the crack to widen on its own. The system was so top-heavy now that it would do the heavy lifting for him.
By the time the sun started to go down, those little ripples had turned into waves. A supply truck got stuck because its digital clearance didn't match the new morning protocols. A service window slammed shut mid-transaction, only to be pried open an hour later by some panicked supervisor with a different set of contradictory orders. Every "fix" just birthed a new disaster. The system was spending more energy pretending to work than actually doing anything.
Around noon, the tension finally snapped. It wasn't a total collapse, just a moment of pure exposure.
A senior suit showed up at the checkpoint. He had that heavy, practiced calm of a man who'd rather disappear than shout at them. With one sharp word, he shut down the chaos. No explanation, no questions. The crowd moved on, looking relieved, but the vibe had curdled. It wasn't the relief of being safe; it was the cold realization that the people in charge were just winging it.
The mask had slipped.
Elias watched the moment sink in. Compression had finally made the invisible cracks visible to everyone. He headed back to the lower districts, taking the long way to make sure he didn't leave a trail. When he finally walked into the dim light of the workshop, Sarah was already there, staring at the maps on the wall.
"They showed their hand," she said quietly.
He nodded, feeling every year of his age as he sat down. "They had to step in publicly. That's a mistake they can't scrub from the logs."
The logic was simple: a public override meant someone had to be accountable. You can't blame a "glitch" when a man in a suit is the one giving the orders. The system they built to simplify the world had just made their lives a lot more complicated.
Sarah took a long, slow breath. "Then the next move won't be about fixing the rules. It'll be about the story they tell."
"They're going to need a villain," Elias said, looking at her. "Not because they found one, but because people find it easier to swallow a lie than to admit the whole machine is broken."
"Stories are easy," she added. "They wash away all the messy details people are too tired to deal with."
The room went quiet. Outside, the city was back to its mechanical grind, acting like the "glitch" was fixed. It had no idea that by stepping in to save face, the powers that be had shown exactly where the seams were—and how easy it would be to tear them wide open.
They'd chosen the machine over the people. Now, they were going to find out exactly what happens when the machine runs out of oil.