The steel door shudders under the pressure from the hall. Red relay light washes the room in pulses. Dallas Fontaine stands at the master switch, with Jackson Temple and Murderbone braced beside him, while Elena Vane covers the angle to the corridor.

A violent clang rolls through the door seam. Dust shakes loose from the frame. Murderbone lowers his head and growls at the crack, every muscle locked on the breach.

The door bows inward another inch. The switch hum deepens. Dallas has the final choice in front of him, the room, the circuit, and the men on the other side waiting for his move.

Dallas clips the tagged cable clean. The relay shrieks, then drops into a hard electrical stutter, and the red lights along the room’s spine begin to die in sequence.

The breaker bank coughs out a final burst. One by one, the status lamps on the master panel go dark, and the hum under the floor breaks apart.

Jackson yanks the severed line free and drops it into the open cabinet. A folded service sketch slides out with it, marked in grease pencil and stamped for Pier Nine.

Murderbone snaps at the widening seam, but the pressure from the hall weakens. The steel door stops buckling and gives a thin metallic click from the inside.

Dallas sees the blacked cable trail dead at the customs annex route, the map now broken at its source.

The relay room settled into a hard, silent black.

Below the customs annex, the citywide circuit died with a clean cut and a sudden, grateful hush. Mercer Holdings' reach into the ley-line grid was broken, and the pressure at the steel door finally let go. Dallas Fontaine stood with the others in the dark, and the Pier Nine operation became only a story of what had been stopped.