The first thing Victor Hale lost was control.
It was plausible.
He noticed it not in a headline or a meeting, but in the subtle failure of language. The words that had always carried him through conflict procedure, compliance, mitigation, and oversight no longer settled cleanly into place. They sounded thinner now. Overused. Defensive.
Language had limits.
Victor had reached them.
The freeze was initiated at 5:43 a.m. GMT.
It did not come with an order, a signature, or a traceable chain of authority. It came wrapped in consensus an automated pause triggered by a compliance coalition that technically answered to no single government and, therefore, could not be challenged through one.
Victor had helped design that structure years ago.
At the time, it had seemed elegant.
Now it was
