His mind raced ahead, the way it always did when the evidence clicked into place. The surface population had not outgrown labor. Labor had been removed from sight. Comfort had not become universal. It had been narrowed, arranged, fed through hidden channels to people raised not to ask what fed them. The old dream of post-scarcity had survived as architecture and manners while beneath it a different human line kept the pumps turning, the food moving, the air clean. He thought of all the blank answers in the gardens, all the open hands receiving fruit they had not grown, and a wave of shame moved through him so sudden it felt almost physical.

Not because he had built this. Because for one stupid bright stretch of hours after his arrival, he had wanted to believe it.

He turned back toward the ladder route. He had enough now. More than enough. Proof lived in every pipe and crate and sleeping recess. He only had to get back to the surface, hold the shape of it in his mind, and think.

The undercity chose that moment to stop pretending he was alone.

A light went out behind him.

Then another farther down the service way. Then a third, leaving the corridor in bands of red and dark. Machinery still ran, but the balance of the place shifted. The steady hum stayed steady. Human sound entered around it: a scrape on grating overhead, the quick tap of feet crossing a catwalk, a low whisper cut off when he turned.