The countdown reached 48 hours.

Emma stood at the center of the Aegis Command Room—dim lighting, layered screens, quantum security walls humming like restless static. Around her, the most brilliant minds of her generation ran simulations, scanned anomalies, and parsed code that refused to behave. They were chasing a ghost.

Or worse—a reflection.

Jack arrived with Mariana’s encoded notebooks. “We found another passage,” he said, flipping to a bookmarked page. “She called it ‘The ...