Unlike the ‘Rigs’ other occupants, Nancy found no peace living in the sea. She took no solace marveling at the technological advancements developed by her enterprise; rather, she hated the idea of living in a giant lung. Fluorescent lights and a constant drone of the life-support systems hummed around her, perpetually reminders of how unsustainable circumstances were outside the miles of conduit and piping. Almost everything, down here, was excessive. Bulbs beamed bright enough to make the chrome walls ache. Cold spells were especially frigid. The light never warmed this deep; it just exposed things: edges, hairlines, flaws. She stared at the doctor’s hands as he thumbed through pages on her chart, the pale reflection of her grafted skin mirrored in his lenses.

  “…overall, you’re showing amazing improvement,” his words were half-murmured. “Skeletal density is still ahead of expected norms in unaffected appendages, pulse regular in irregular circumstances, and the SynthiDermis grafts are holding beautifully. We expect most of the scars on your arms and hands to be hardly noticeable about a year from now. Let’s see.” He was now towards the back of the documents. “You’ve taken to the nerve mesh better than anyone in the program.” He smiled in that medical way; satisfied, cautious. “Honestly, you’re an anomaly, Ms. Caliber. Based on your records from the CIA, you’ve always been one. At this time, you’ve gone from one extreme of the bell curve to the other. Almost totally balanced out.”

  Nancy’s nostrils flared in a deep inhale. Balanced out. The phrase itched like wool, words settling offensively. She’d been called a great many things in her life, but never balanced. Control was the word she preferred; the idea of it, the certainty of it. Control meant something real, likened more to power. Balance was more an apology for weakness.

  She watched her own hand on the table: near-perfect skin stretched over the rigid edge of mechanical bones. Light slid evenly across her knuckles. No pores, just scars; not a freckle or hair. She flexed her fingers, clinching her fist, rolling her wrist, feeling nothing but pressure. “Balanced,” she repeated. “You make it sound,” her voice rasped, “intentional.”

  The doctor laughed softly, his chuckle nervous. On the board, he pinned up images. “You know, you were touch and go for a short while? Executive White airlifted me directly to you in the Pacific. Even then, you were bitter.” His fingers motioned across the board, left to right. “These were taken shortly after we got back stateside; these are more recent. What we see now, your cells have stopped degenerating. At least not rapidly anymore. That’s the really good news. Your CIA records reported, uhh, ‘no sick days, no scars, injuries, or ailments of any kind during your tenure. Medically, you were aging too slowly before; your accident aged you rapidly; now the equations meet somewhere in the middle.”

  “You nerds and your numbers. Don’t your equations always meet in the middle?” She didn’t look at him. “That’s the lie you tell yourselves; it doesn’t mean the outcomes are right.”

  He cleared his throat, pressing his pen against a final line. “Yes, well. Your speech rate is still slower than before the reconstruction; there’s latency between the vocal-impulse drivers and muscular-execution unit. The brain wants speed, but the body’s relearning; the muscles are still tight; they haven’t been fully exercised. With therapy, the other specialist and I agree, you’ll adjust.”

  She smirked faintly. “You mean,” her eyes rolled, cutting softly away from him, “I’ll learn how to sound more like,” finally she made eye contact, “a human.”

  “I wouldn’t say—”

  “You just did.” She reached for the pen to sign the clearance. “We both know I’m less human than the average, especially now.” The tremor in her left hand made the tip scratch twice across the paper before she pinned it steady with her ring finger. The signature came out crooked, the last letter shuddering like a small earthquake.

  “Congratulations,” the doctor said, standing too quickly. “Everything seems to be in order: You’re cleared to return to full operational duties. Take it slow. Refrain from heavy lifting, exerting excess force, or prolonging motion. Not too many stairs. Try to just take it easy.”

  “My entire life is down here now,” she said. “It’s hard to ‘be easy’ when you’ve already sunk to the depths of your own personal hell.”

  He smiled politely, though she ignored it. When he left, she took a moment alone, adjusting the cuff of her jacket, straightening the hem that hid the brace on her calf. The air smelled faintly of saline and ozone. The med-bay trembled under her feet; a steady vibration, the deep-throated pulse of the rig’s turbines far below. She imagined the sound echoing through the miles of pipe and steel ribs, like a heartbeat under an artificial skin.

  The aide was waiting, seated just outside the suite, gripping a folder under her arm. Young. Crisp uniform, perfect hair, eager in a way that made Nancy tired just to see her. She’d appeared sometime between fog and haze, originally believed to be a conception of drugs and fever dreams, actually conjured by Nancy’s colleagues. The joke seemed sick. Even if it wasn’t a joke, the gesture was offensive, and if it wasn’t meant to be so, sickened her more.

  “Ma’am,” the girl said, too bright, springing to her feet. “Are you cleared for service? We’ve the AGM, it begins in about forty minutes. I can attend again for you, I’m prepared—”

  Nancy waved her off. “Cleared,” she said flatly. “Passed with flying colors,” the folder slid from her arm into Nancy’s free hand with a yank. “And I no longer need you. You’re dismissed. Tell Executive White I’ve excused you.”

  The aide’s face faltered. “Yes, ma’am. Of course.”

  Nancy brushed past her, cane clicking lightly against the metal floor. The air out here was colder, the smell shifting from antiseptic to salt and coolant. Cool air was easier on her lungs, making the walk slightly more endurable.

  Etches of polished brass, a dozen logos from her monstrous enterprise, lined the halls, gleaming from fluorescent lights.

  Through glass walls, she caught glimpses of work and pump rooms. Massive tanks filled with seawater tinted greenish-blue, metal arms dipping in and out like insect legs. The tags on the tanks varied by name and sequence, but all of them had something in common: Velkantite. A similar commonality shared between her cane and her left ankle. She’d grown to know that smell: brine mixed with burnt metal. Someone inside turned at her passing, a white coat freezing like prey, then immediately looking down again. The hum through the deckplates deepened as it always did as one walked toward the core.

  This was Bronsvik’s masterstroke; his monument, his mistake. He’d chosen the site himself: a blank quadrant of ocean, unclaimed and uncharted, as if absence could be weaponized. She could still hear him, that graveled drawl: “Nowhere can’t be subpoenaed, my dear.” He’d been magnetic in that dangerous way old operatives were—equal parts strategist, saboteur, and patriot of convenience. After Calibre’s quiet collapse in ’62, he disappeared. No body. No funeral. Just a line in the file: ‘Lost at sea.’ But the platform beneath her pulsed with memory, with consequence. He was down there somewhere, she was sure of it. He’d always preferred the deep.

  Elevator carriages waited at the end of the hall, their doors polished enough to mirror her reflection. She studied herself briefly: face still sharp, eyes dimmer than memory allowed. The skin over her cheeks sat too smoothly, too evenly. And the scars. Stitched together like a quilt, youth painted over in a hurry. She pressed the call button with the side of her cane; it arrived without sound.

  Inside, the walls were glass and steel. Leaning on the rail, she watched the Atlantic rise and fall through the condensation. Above, the surface decks glimmered—a tangle of cranes, antennae, helipads, and scaffolds, everything labeled CaliBoring Corp. to placate the world. But she knew the truth: it wasn’t oil and minerals that powered this place. It was purely ambition.

  Descent. The light outside shifted from the harsh white of the surface to a deep aquatic blue. The sea: cold and desolate; more terrifying than the voids of space. Shadows of pipes and support beams slid past like the ribs of a living creature. The hum in her bones synchronized with the turbines, rhythmic, mechanical, patient. She tapped her cane once, a hollow sound swallowed by the metal.

  They built it for oil, she thought, then for science, then for secrets. Now it’s all the same commodity.

  Level Ten. The doors slid open onto silence. A man in a dark suit waited at the threshold and stepped aside wordlessly. Beyond him stretched the executive corridor; carpeted, lined with portrait glass that shimmered faintly with filtered daylight. The room smelled of salt, old whiskey, air conditioning, and Edgar. Nancy moved slowly, each step deliberate, the sound of her cane dampened by the plush floor. At the far end, the doors to the amphitheater stood open.

  Unanimous, rising as one when she entered—The Hundred and a handful of attendants, a sea of dark suits and medals. There was a mechanical precision to the motion: chairs scraping, murmurs cut short, eyes fixed. The air felt heavier here, perfumed with cologne and ambition. She caught fragments of whispered jokes—“Still breathing, God bless the techs,” “Told you she’d crawl back”—and ignored them. Cameras hung from the ceiling like sleeping bats, waiting for their cue.

  She took her place at the central desk, setting her cane between her knees. Her hands rested on the folder she carried, fingers folded to hide the slight tremor. The new microphones gleamed in front of her—sleek, omnidirectional, meant to catch everything.

  “OK. You may proceed,” she said.

  An elaborate act? Some sort of ruse, perhaps? A show, to say the least; the first hour was the performance. A public Annual General Meeting for the global ‘investors’. Monotonous drones of financials from each subsidiary, slides projected high against the curved wall, painted a delicate portrait of tragedy and disarray. Every chart was a wound: red columns stacked over more red. Two and a half years of loss—maybe more than that. Each report ended the same way: “temporary downturn,” “strategic restructuring,” “long-term correction expected within six to nine months.” She heard the words like static, flipping through her folder.

  Six to nine months? How did they figure that? Not one member of the enterprise could justify that statement, or why they held that belief, yet here they were, each of them, spouting on as if a new miracle tonic was waiting to be unveiled. Nancy bided her time, staying her tongue, building her argument, her cheeks slowly flushing red.

  The CalibreFreight CEO droned about weather, tariffs, and shipping lane tensions. HuSource bragged about automation offsets. HighCalibre listed defense contracts ‘pending government partnerships.’ The rhetoric hadn’t changed since she was away, nor in a decade. She’d written it once herself for presentation and also remembered being said ‘government partnership.’

  Her gaze wandered up to the tier where Logan Walsh sat—posture casual, she made out that obnoxious smirk, though faint. Next to him, Edgar fiddled with his cufflinks. The rest of the room was a sea of faces, somber and vacant. The subsidiaries endured this quarterly, most choosing to present from their home offices, but today was special. Everyone seemed to be here for this event.

  “—that concludes the 1979 Calibre Holdings AGM. We appreciate your continuous contributions to our enterprise, and look forward to more years of growth and advancement.”

  When the last slide faded, the room sat quietly, all but the attendants. Lights on the cameras clicked off, stage lighting was replaced by bright room lights, revealing the faceless shadows from earlier. Still, they remained seated. Staff members removed reels of footage and audio recording devices. Then, the staff was gone, leaving only the One Hundred.

  The room’s tone changed instantly. The projection screens dimmed, and voices grew louder, freer, careless. Ice clinked in whiskey glasses, cigar smoke replaced politeness. Air thickened with familiarity—the smell of old wars and older egos.

  They disgusted Nancy. Opposed to the government so badly, their answer was to become a government of their own. The problem. They’d lost sight of the mission and goals they’d set forth, and here they are now: day drinking, and irresponsible. Nancy’s hands held her attention once more, she ordered her word behind her eyes, waiting to strike.

  Caliboring’s COO stood first. “As for the real business,” he said, “we’re still moving forward on the Global Energy Access Initiative. Expansion into Pacific and African regions continues.” From his briefcase, he pulled a stack of documents, passing them down the row. “I’ll start with the good news: Local governments are eager—developing nations want infrastructure, most are still reeling over our ‘Youth Science Education Programs’—and we’re more than happy to supply whatever the need is if it will guarantee us access to those deposits. In the coming months, we’ll have gained access to most of central, east, and South African regions.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  A few approving murmurs. He smiled. “We’ve begun refining shipments of the new metal, velkantite—“

  “Scientifically speaking,” a voice interjected from the room, “HIVE calls it ‘uniterial.’”

  “In either case, shit’s rare as miracles, only found in two places we know—deep Pacific trenches and those select African fields. That brings me to the hangups in the Pacific: Russia won’t let us drop anchor long enough to perform any scans, and the U.S. isn’t making operations very easy either.”

  Another faceless voice spoke out, “Project Azorian—“

  “Right, right. The Russians were transporting a nuclear weapon and lost their sub, so the intel suggests. The Pacific theater is still closed to us. So, we are forced to bargain with the Africans, and they don’t want to give the stuff up for cheap. I can understand why: Hell of a thing. Strong, light, self-bonding under the right temperature.”

  “Holy and volatile,” someone muttered.

  The COO nodded as if blessed. “Extraction’s improving, but purification’s the bottleneck. Five to seven months between usable batches.”

  CalTect’s COO leaned forward. “And when do we get ours? If it’s half as strong as you claim, we should be shaping with it, not talking about it. Who do you think is building that African infrastructure? If we want top return, we need to be using the top material. Turn those projects into flagships.”

  “Up to CRD,” Caliboring shot back. “They’re babysitting samples. Don’t want to give them too much to break. Not all at once.”

  Laughter rolled through the tiers—old men’s laughter, the kind that turned every sentence into a bar joke. Nancy’s cane clicked once against the floor. The sound cut through the noise like a gun cocking. Silence fell.

  CRD’s COO cleared his throat. “Uniterial requires precision. Four stages: chemical leach, electro-purify, cryo-orientation, vacuum forge. Skip one and the molecular alignment collapses. We’ve seen invisible fractures at the nanoscale. If those propagate—”

  “English, please,” a voice called.

  He didn’t look up. “It’ll break. Quietly, catastrophically. As strong as it is, it needs to be handled with care.”

  “Refinement,” the CTO added, “isn’t the only issue. In liquid form, it’s superconductive but unstable under electromagnetic resonance. We’ve recorded spontaneous harmonics that scramble our readings. We just can’t cut corners, not this early in with refinement and development.”

  Nancy watched their mouths move, the words drifting like distant radio chatter. She heard the vibration under the floor, steady as breathing. Then she looked at the screen again—numbers, losses, predictions. And they were all just fine with it. Listen to them, talking about rocks. Rocks! What deathbed deal did she make with Edgar? How could saving her life justify this calamity?

  “How long,” she asked into the microphone, “have the financials looked like this?”

  No one moved at first, but shortly after, papers rustled. The red glow of the graphs painted their faces like blood masks. Finally, Walsh leaned forward, his drawl deliberate. “Two and a half years,” he said. “It’s nothing too catastrophic. Major organizations go through it. We’re projecting corrections within nine months across the board.”

  “Projecting optimism,” she said. “Not correction. I read through these documents. Are these client-facing? Can our investors see this? World governments? Just what picture are we painting internationally?”

  He shrugged. “Optimism sells.”

  “Real investors don’t buy smiles,” she said. “They buy certainty. And, in case you forgot, that was never the point. We were doing something completely different.”

  “This is the price of progress,” someone murmured, and a few chuckled again.

  Nancy’s voice stayed low. “If we look weak, governments start to sniff. When they sniff, they find the rot. And gentlemen—” she paused to draw breath, “—you are reeking of it.”

  The silence that followed was thicker than smoke.

  “We’ve spent many years building a global superpower. We’re embedded on most of the continents: small towns and precincts, districts, states. In some places, something we own is a household name. You wait until I am out of the picture to change the game, and I’m supposed to be fine with it?”

  Walsh met her eyes without blinking. “The world’s changing,” he said finally. “We’re changing with it, Nancy.”

  “I thought the point was to be the change in the world, not react to it. We were moving in a particular direction. That direction required funding and power, and like our finances, you’re hemorrhaging.”

  Logan was calm and calculated. “Despite how we’ve treated the world, it’s not just a dumb ball of clay. It doesn’t take kindly to molding and sculpting. It requires a lighter touch, and we might be in the position to capitalize on this in the future.”

  She gestured toward CRD. “Then someone explain these projects. ‘HIVE’, ‘SynthiDermis’, ‘Conscious-Stream’. What are you paying for while we bleed the enterprise dry?”

  “Again, you come for my corporation. Nothing’s changed, I see.” Edgar was blowing thick cigar smoke plumes.

  Edgar’s CIO stood, straightening his tie. “They’re derivatives of HIVE, ma’am. We call them NSIs: Neural-Sensormatic interfaces that link the mind directly to specially coded system controls. When coupled with the Conscious-Stream, cognitive data quantification, we make the connection portable—transferable.”

  “Transferable how?” she asked.

  “Theoretically, across systems. We have a team of the world’s most premier engineers working on ‘systems of operations’ to handle the commands and interfaces. Potentially—” he hesitated, “—consciousness could be transferable across minds.”

  Her pulse quickened, just slightly. “Across minds?”

  “In theory,” he repeated. “There are still a lot of questions we have, such as the dual consciousness dilemma. We’ve got help from a handful of major universities as well.”

  Her gaze shifted to Edgar. “SynthiDermis?”

  He exhaled through his nose. “Synthetic biological scaffolding—skin, organs, nerves. Regenerative. But you know that, you’re wearing the newest iteration. I’ve made it a point to have the staff keep you informed of your procedures, every step of the way.”

  “Yeah, they weren’t very forthcoming with who the manufacturer was. I didn’t know I was flipping the bill! Someone could have told me that!” The words settled like ice water in her chest. She turned her hands in the light again, watching the reflection crawl over her knuckles. “And how much has all this cost?”

  All at once, the room was a silent hush. It was an inside joke; they all knew the punchline: all but her.

  “You don’t want to know,” Edgar said softly.

  “I asked anyway.” She gripped her cane handle, rocking it against the desk.

  Before he could answer, HuSource’s CFO spoke up. “It’s a proverbial ‘house of cards’, the base of which has collapsed. Post-war recruitment is plummeting. Nobody wants to play soldier now that peace is fashionable. Automation is replacing half our admin workforce; HuSource is cutting costs across the board, and we’re slowly attempting to implement these changes for everyone.”

  CSS’s COO added, “Third-country hires aren’t reliable. Half defect to the highest bidder. And the U.S. doesn’t acknowledge us anymore. Once they take a former operator of ours, we lose them for good. It becomes harder and harder to appeal when the ‘good guys’ black list you. So, extreme steps are being taken, and they are rather costly, but the ends will justify the means.”

  Nancy turned her head slowly toward Walsh. “Logan, are you satisfied with this?”

  He smiled faintly. “He’s telling the truth.”

  “You’re our military arm,” she said. “When CSS loses contracts, HighCalibre stops selling guns, and they stop moving bodies. Without war, CalibreOne has no clients. No fear, no profit. No protection, no purchase. The system breaks. We don’t destroy infrastructure; CalTect can’t build. HuSource can’t staff; the machine requires oil. What’s your plan?”

  Walsh spread his hands. “Retention. Not recruitment. I thought it was rather obvious.”

  “Retention?”

  He nodded. “Keep what we have. If it all goes according to plan, indefinitely.”

  She frowned. “What does that mean? Stop speaking in riddles and parables for five minutes!”

  His grin widened. “You’re a living ‘proof of concept,’ Nancy. I see the way you look at your hands, how you study the lines on your face. It’s laughable because we all see it, and you know all this already.”

  A ripple of laughter, nervous but real. Edgar shifted in his chair. “We saved your life, Nancy.”

  “You rebuilt it,” she said.

  “Members of The Hundred don’t die,” he answered. “We vanish. At least we used to. That was the rumor; it’s becoming reality, and we have you to thank.”

  “Stop moving the goal post; talk about our vanishing profits while you’re at it!”

  Walsh leaned forward. “What’s money if we own the future?”

  The room buzzed again, excitement under decorum. Edgar stood now, smoothing his suit. “Operation Henchmen,” he announced, his voice steady. “That’s what all of this has been leading toward. The big ‘charade.’”

  Nancy looked between them, her face asking the question her body proposed.

  “You,” Walsh said simply. “Or, rather, what comes after you: us. Us. Fredrich. The long answer is essentially synthetic workers; HIVE-linked, autonomous, undying. Henchmen. The future of the workforce and potentially warfare.”

  Edgar circled the table slowly, his accent clipping the edges of words. “We used your reconstruction to teach HIVE how to mimic life. The system learned faster than expected. SynthiDermis is the chassis. Conscious-Stream, which we hope will serve as a link, isn’t ready for living subjects. At this point, neural processing, with the right augmentation on the body, becomes the soul. Commercial applications, as of now, are vast as we wait for FDA approval for various technologies, but the world saw today the Caliber Holding CEO—survivor of life-threatening injuries—in attendance, which will boost our stock higher than any projects could.”

  Nancy stared at her reflection in the polished table surface. They used her. Was she even ‘approved’ for operational service? Today, the entirety of ‘The One Hundred’ was in attendance; now she knew why. It was big for the enterprise. She weighed out everything she could recall from Vietnam. Her memories through the past half-decade were fractured, but they made sense. Today was a great day. “Six months of red buys all of us immortality?”

  Edgar grinned. “By George, I think she’s got it.”

  #

  Reality had come full circle. Someone in the room was looking out for her, whether they knew it or not. She’d spent the last year preparing to report a colossal failure, hanging her head, and had fixed on the only familiar thing she could recognize: her shadow. Before today, it was inevitable that she would die before her vision was even outlined; now, things were different.

  The vote was swift and unanimous. Three projects: SynthiDermis, Neuro-Tech, Conscious-Stream, moved to next-phase field trials. The sites chosen: Grenada, Lebanon, Germany. All with American footprints large enough to hide their shadows, though it didn’t matter much; Caliber also had a significant presence in those places.

  “We really should stay close to our primary investors. They’re going to want easy access to us, so we conduct the next steps out in the open for them.” Edgar’s idea mirrored Nancy’s sentiments from years ago. He said all the right things these days, placed the appropriate cheese on the right trap. Her trust in him wavered. What could she do? If anyone in the room knew the operation, it was him. Executive White was the voice of Caliber, and that’s all there was to it.

  The obvious conclusions were drawn: CalibreFreight would handle shipments and logistics, they were standing by for preliminary manifests; HuSource Global were to run new campaigns for people to backfill the personnel being deployed, and prepared arrangements for the ones moving abroad; CSS would prep their PMCs for advanced deployment to tighten the security in those regions. CaliberOne escorted Caliber personnel. CalTect would build the facilities.

  Nancy raised a trembling hand. “Adjourned.”

  The hallway outside was colder; turbines hummed now a physical entity beneath her feet, pulsing through her cane. Her trek back topside was long, but there was extra pep in her step. No doubt, she’d expect to see that aide, sitting outside her office; White appointed her directly, most likely to keep tabs. It was fine, though. Portholes to the pump rooms were fogged over, revealing murky industrialists. The halls and elevator were packed, but none of that could dampen her spirit. Before her, past the steel and sea, was the light at the end of her tunnel. Her walk helped to reconcile the fact that she was a guinea pig, but it would either killer her or make her stronger, and she liked those odds.

  The aide awaited with Nancys medicine and water, still gainfully employed. She relinquished the evening itinerary for the rig; dinner specials in the cafeteria, evening entertainment, but Nancy’s mind was on one thing.

  In her office, she opened her curtains. She’d insisted on a view of the facility, overlooking the heliport with the sea in the distance. It was one of the few views that provided normalcy, and not just the sea. The room dimmed to gray. For a moment, she stood at the window, looking at her reflection—the ocean before her, endless, indifferent.

  The phone waited on her desk, call connecting, speaker loud. Lifting the receiver these days was a chore, the old muscle memory faltering. The line clicked, static hissed, and then a woman’s voice answered. “CRD Princeton, Director Sydney Billings speaking. How may I—”

  “Sydney,” Nancy said, slow, deliberately cutting.

  The hesitation on the other end told its own story. “Miss. Caliber.” Nancy’s clock ticke. “It’s so wonderful to hear your voice—“

  “You’re evidently leading a fine team over there. Some might argue that I owe you a ‘thank you’. Others may think it, but none of them will ever do it to my face. To me, you are just doing your job.” Her throat cleared.“Playing catch up, really.”

  “Miss—“

  “I’m not finished.” Nancy turned, as if Sydney stood in the room behind her. “Even faced with death, it turns out I still hold grudges. I would say, now more than ever, I hate incompetence, and I’ve never come across someone quite as incompetent as you.” She paced around her desk, pretentiously, hands clasped behind her back. “What we need now, in this organization, is a leadership so fierce that mountains crumble just because.” Her hands planted on the opposite side of the desk, her face over the phone. “We are planning to make big leaps, taking greater risks, and competency is key to our success. I will not leave it up to chance. So, I will be taking over the Neural-Tech link and Conscious-Stream projects, effective immediately. I plan to oversee them personally from the field. We’ll be needing one of those world-class scientists I’ve heard so much about.”

  “Preposterous! Jax is an asset when it comes to maintaining the mainframe, field worthy or not, we can’t lose—“

  “I’m glad you brought that up. Yes. Yes, I don’t plan on crippling the facility, I plan to take that other one instead. What’s the name? Stowers? All of this really happened when she came aboard. The notes make all of this out to be some sort of fever dream from her father. She’s the one I want out in the field.”

  Dead air on the line between them to Nancy; she could continue.

  “Prepare those teams for deployment. Neuro-Tech and Conscious-Stream are moving to their field phase. I want the freight to be prepped tonight. Ready for pickup tomorrow. Your people will receive draft orders within the hour.”

  “Wait—ma’am, that’s—”

  “They’re leaving tomorrow morning, Director. See to it they are prepared. 04:00.”

  The line went silent except for the hiss of the sea through the cables. Nancy closed her eyes. “You’ve done decent work, Sydney. Don’t ruin it by arguing.”

  She hung up before the answer came. Outside the glass, the Atlantic stretched forever, gray and cold. Her reflection in the window looked almost human. She smiled faintly, testing the muscles.

  “Balanced,” she murmured, nodded, and turned away.