At 10:00 AM, a mechanical *thrum* vibrated through the floorboards. The chandelier above them buzzed, and the electric lights surged back to life, washing out the soft morning sun with harsh, artificial yellow.
“The grid is back,” William announced, checking the thermostat.
Across the room, screens began to light up. Phones that had been dead bricks for twenty-four hours pinged with a barrage of notifications. The silence of the sanctuary was shattered by the digital noise of the outside world.
Victoria reached for her tablet on the nightstand. The Wi-Fi icon turned from gray to solid black. Instantly, her inbox began to populate–hundreds of emails. *Legal. Press. Board of Directors. Julianna Vane’s lawyers.*
She scrolled through the congratulations and the legal briefs, her thumb moving rhythmically.
Buried deep in the stack, filtered automatically into her “Spam” folder due to its encryption headers, was a single email with no subject line.
*Sender: Anonymous.*
*Body: The audit was incomplete. The Zurich Files are opening. Be ready.*
Victoria didn’t see it. She swiped past it, opening a message from the CFO regarding the Vane-Tech integration. The seed of the next war lay dormant in the dark, waiting to germinate.