The Directorate hit back. The vault shuddered as subsonic deterrents activated. A steel bar slammed into the outer door, a promise of containment.

Twenty minutes.

She thought of the night she'd first seen the code—faint, like a bruise beneath white noise—embedded in a traffic camera's cache. It had been meaningless then, a rumor of numbers. Jules had said only: "Bring it to light. That’s how you change the system." Change. The word had seemed fragile as paper but lethal as a blade.

She nodded.