As the elevator begins its silent descent, the opacity of the frosted glass clears, revealing a grandiose view of a sunset-bathed Washington D.C., scintillating like a diamond embedded in an ebony case’s red velvet cloth. The city gives the illusion of possessing prismatic qualities, as though it were catching the sky’s ruddy, purpling streaks and throwing them back heavenward with the greens and golds of its coruscating neon lights. It’s a view that never fails to plunge you into a pensive mood.

To your displeasure, however, you can't help but notice that the Pentagram Tower already stands out in the skyline, even with its upper floors still under construction. It won't be long before that eyesore is completed. How you wish it would simply... disappear.

And then, it does. Along with the entire city.

It's as if a switch has been flipped. You hear a sharp intake of air from the COO as the capital is subsumed by abyssal darkness.

"What on earth—" He starts forward with a choked sound, before cutting himself off as the city blinks into existence once. While the COO stares in bewilderment, you lean forward, resting your forearm against the glass of the elevator as you peer downward. Though the elevator is descending too rapidly to judge the reactions of pedestrians, it’s apparent that traffic is still circulating. It's as if nothing out of the ordinary occurred.

The elevator reaches the ground floor not long after, its doors smoothly sliding open. Exchanging a glance, you and Powell step out into the lobby. The reception desks are manned by employees wearing puzzled expressions, but nobody seems particularly distressed. You hear a few whispers here and there as you advance, but nothing more.

"A citywide blackout?" mutters Powell under his breath, the blue veins crisscrossing his brow gaining in prominence as his perplexity deepens. "I thought the cutting-edge WET grid was supposed to prevent those." Then, musing aloud: "Ah, but our building didn't lose power...?"

"The emergency closed loop superconducting grid," you answer. "Coils of mgB2 wiring. It works independently of the rest of the building's power." During one of your early visits to RHS headquarters you had bumped and gotten into talking with a contractor on a routine maintenance job and were able to follow his explanation fairly well, having made a small study of electrical engineering in your college years.

"Ah. Of course," Powell murmurs. You expect to both go your respective ways, but instead find yourself subjected to an appraising, sidelong look, as if he's seeing you in a new light. He hesitates for a moment, and then poses you a murmured question. "Do you think it was an attack?"

You return his probing look expressionlessly. An attack? What exactly does he have in mind? Some shadowy organization in the preparatory stages of firing off a weapon capable of knocking out the power grid of the nation’s capital? The very idea is ludicrous…

The businessman's eyes are still on you unblinkingly. "Highly unlikely," you answer at last. "Near impossible, in fact. Causing a blackout on that scale would require an immense amount of power. The kind which would require access to the grid itself. Not to mention, a WET system doesn't just fail like that. It would require a cascading failure of every single node—which is, again, unlikely. It's partitioned at a molecular level. I'm much more inclined to believe that there was a blip in the quantum partitioning system that regulates the flow of energy through the grid."

Powell gives his head a small shake, as if rousing himself from a dream and realizing the absurdity of his own words. "Of course. Forget I said anything." He seems to have regained his composure, and you think it won't be long before he bids you a distracted farewell. True to your expectations, that occurs within the next few seconds, and it isn’t long after that a secretary solicits his attention, while you're escorted out the building and led to a company limousine.

As you sit in the back of the limousine, on your way home to Amie, you find yourself watching the darkness roll by outside the tinted windows. Something is different tonight, you can feel it. Something new, something just beyond the edge of your vision. You're far from giving credence to Powell’s fanciful speculation, however. You let your mind conjures phantom shapes in the shadow as it pleases, telling yourself that everything is fine. It was just a temporary glitch in the system. Everything is fine.