For a full ten seconds, the only sound in the cavernous NASDAQ studio was the frantic, useless clicking of a technician’s mouse. The silence was a physical thing, a crushing weight that smothered the buzz of a thousand conversations, the hum of the servers, the very heartbeat of global commerce. It was the sound of a world holding its breath.
On stage, Elias stood frozen at the podium, a statue carved from disbelief. The confident smile was gone, replaced by a slack-jawed incomprehension. The teleprompter was dead. The massive data walls surrounding him were twin voids of absolute black. His speech, his triumph, his entire empire had been swallowed by that darkness.
A nervous cough broke the spell. Then a whisper, which grew into a wave of confused murmuring that swept through the audien
