Chloe let the numbers breathe.

That was the trick—resisting the urge to force meaning too quickly. Hale’s model of her would expect decisiveness, urgency, a visible spike in corrective action. So she gave him exactly that. On the surface.

She initiated the first public stabilization protocol.

Nothing dramatic. Nothing flashy. Just enough to look responsible.

Danny watched from across the room as system alerts began to populate her screen—municipal grids auto-correcting, transit ...