Sophie stood alone on the rooftop of her summit hotel, city lights glowing like stars beneath her feet.

Camellia joined her, two mugs of tea in hand.

“You okay?” she asked.

“No,” Sophie said. “But I’m ready.”

Camellia nodded.

“I found something else,” she said. “Radius isn’t just watching us. They’ve seeded most of the new audit systems the UN is reviewing. They’re not small anymore.”

“Neither are we,” Sophie replied.

Camellia took a breath.

“Do you ever wonder if we’re building something too big to hold?”

“All the time.”

“But we build anyway?”

“We build smarter.”

Rachel met with Phoenix’s internal intelligence team and projected a timeline of Consortium-aligned...