The boardroom on the 38th floor had never been so quiet. Not the vacuum-tight silence of Ethan's command suite in Singapore, but a different quiet, the kind that comes when twenty-three people are asked to explain why a sensor is not the truth, and the only answer is a bag of leaves.
Lord Sterling's face filled the central screen, his sharp features etched with the weary pride of a man who had spent forty years guarding the dark. Beside him, Tandi's feed showed the Jakarta hub, the titan tree visible through the window behind him, its canopy now so wide it shaded the cooperative's plots that had never been on any map. In the room, Hana, Ethan, Maya, and Ibu Laras stood not at the presentation console, but at the low table that had been carried up from the warehouse, the same blue tarp, th
