The confirmation came just before dawn. Aria hadn’t slept. Not because she couldn’t — but because she chose not to.
Sleep required stillness, and stillness meant allowing the pieces to settle before she was ready to place them. Instead, she remained in motion — reviewing, analyzing, reconstructing patterns that no longer felt like fragments, but something far more intentional.
By the time the first light of morning touched the edges of the skyline, she had what she needed. Not a name. Not yet. But something better. A structure.
Lucien found her exactly where he expected — standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling screen in the private office adjacent to the operations room, her silhouette framed by lines of shifting data.
“You’ve narrowed it down,” he said. Aria didn’t turn immediately
