Their side of the story

At the public unveiling of Nole Alset's cover-story space program, a hairline fracture in the demonstration shuttle turns the glossy launch gala into a live, worldwide near-catastrophe — and someone outside Gravitrek already knew the schedule before it existed.

As earthquakes, a runaway rocket, a jammed dam gate and a market crash erupt on four continents in the same week, Nole Alset races to recruit nine of the world's most guarded geniuses before whoever is sabotaging the recruitment can stop the exodus's leadership from ever sitting in the same room.

The Code Trekkers punch a dying Bridge window onto ground that is still being born — and find lobbyists already staking a city that does not exist, while the first tower has minutes to top out before the door home slams.

Undercover in Chairman Cao's bidding war beneath Narco City, Vivek learns the shadow economy runs on one rule — the cheque clears, no questions — and reads a manifest that proves Umbrax is already circling a guardian nobody has found yet.

A shuttered spice stall makes Siru's scepter shake like never before, and chasing the stray cat who won't stop circling it drags her and a stranded Norwegian surveyor into a smuggling gang's crosshairs — with a rooftop fortune-teller cat as the only one who seems to know why.

Bastet drags Siru and Marcus through the collapse that once unmade them, and they wake as Femi and Babu into Salugi's raid on the Marrakech safehouse — four cats and three people with minutes to get out, and a radio DJ already counting in her last song.

The seekers reach a port where gangs already run cargo through a leaking, half-woken Bridge — and the price of passage turns out to be a debt only Senjo remembers.

To learn why Umbrax has spent a decade buying up Bridge keys, the team crashes a private gala above Narco City — where the only ally inside is a hostage forced to sing, and the price of getting the message out may be his life.

In a back room above Narco City's biggest bank, Siru, Marcus and Vivek must buy nine Council votes for Heliopoly's founding charter before a hired lounge singer finishes her set — and a bomb wired under the table decides the count instead.

As Gravitrek's grand unveiling goes out live to eight billion people, a hidden Umbrax device rides the broadcast toward detonation — and backstage, Salugi's one true word to Elsa Jones costs him the one piece of her he can't get back.

The first mass crossing to Heliopoly hits a live Bridge and a live sinkhole in the same night — and something was already buried under the ground they're building on.

As Earth's first civilians step through the newly-opened Bridge, an Umbrax data-theft turns the crossing into a structural collapse on both sides of the beam — and by the time the tremors stop, Siru and Marcus finally know exactly what they are, and exactly how much is still dark.