The insistent hum of the Governor’s console, a sound that had become both a lifeline and a source of anxiety, filled Ashton’s cramped office. The recent near-disaster with the Ironclad Raiders and the burgeoning Crimson Bloom crisis had pushed the archaic machine to its limits, its internal temperature gauges perpetually flashing red warnings. He’d just managed to oversee the distribution of Thorne’s rudimentary Crimson Bloom vaccine to the outlying settlements when the console blared its arrival notification.