Kael hesitated. “You’re sure?”
She didn’t die. But the next morning, when the Bureau raided the Ariadne and found the rogue officer, the blueprints, and the buyers’ list, Mira woke up in a hospital bed unable to remember her own birthday. The fuse had taken something else—a sliver of her past, swapped for a future.
“We stopped the sale,” Kael said. “But they’re calling you the Oracle of the Silence now. Every agency in the world wants your acumen fuse.”
Mira closed her eyes. Breathed. Let her logical cortex and raw instinct collide.
She worked for the International Risk Bureau, a shadow agency that predicted catastrophes before they happened. Wars. Crashes. Blackouts. Her record was flawless. But her last fuse—six months ago—had predicted a nuclear smuggling route so accurately that she’d collapsed on the ops room floor. Doctors said: one more fuse might stop your heart.
So Mira stepped back. Took a desk job. Ran routine algorithms. Drank tea.
At 03:14 GMT, all communications on three continents dropped. No distress signals. No data. Just… quiet. Satellites showed cities intact. Power grids hummed. But phones, radios, internet—dead. The Bureau was blind.