The news broke, not in a murmur, but in a global fanfare. On a television set in the corner of the Riverside clinic, a beaming news anchor grinned beside a graphic of a gleaming, silver helix. The chyron announced: "GENIUS AI SAVES THOUSANDS: CRANE MODEL PREDICTS FLU OUTBREAK."Reuben looked up from what he was doing, his hands still holding a filthy bandage. On the TV, a man in his late thirties, wearing an impeccably tailored suit and the smug smile of a guy who'd never once had to bribe a guard or watch a child die of dysentery was shaking hands with a European health minister. Dr. Howard Crane. His breakthrough, the "Aegis Predictive Model," had correctly forecast a lethal strain of H5N1 bird flu in a populated region of Northern Italy."By linking satellite data on chicken movement, internet search requests on flu symptomatology in real-time, and commercial airliner passenger manifests, the Aegis Model identified the outbreak vector seventy-two hours prior to the first cluster be

The invitation arrived not by mail or email but through a series of encrypted, nested messages that Leo Mbeki, now leading a network of cyber-activists, ultimately unraveled and passed along to Reuben. An invitation, it was, but one couched in expectation. A small, informal collection of global health leaders wanted to get together. The location: a secure, neutral venue in Geneva. The subject: the "Riverside Phenomenon."Anna was vigorously resisted. "It's a trap, Reuben. Collins might be at the back of it. Or they'll glance at you once, decide you're a madman or a pretender, and have you committed. Your work is here."But the System, for once, was clear. A golden, priority hierarchy glimmered in his mind's eye: **PARADIGM-LEVEL ENGAGEMENT: MANDATORY. RISK: HIGH. STRATEGIC VALUE: MAXIMUM.** To refuse was to be trapped forever at the level of a fringe player, a local curiosity. To go on was to rise to the very global arena he wondered if he had the ability to play on.The location was

The world had shrunk to the size of a child's hot brow. Reuben had been a specter in his own clinic for three days, his thoughts focused solely on the cadence of Miriam's breathing, the slow, steady drop in her temperature, the hesitant return of color to her cheeks. He had stuffed the System's world map into a reduced, subdued corner of his mind. The explosion of yellow warnings and even the constant red of the Karysia crisis receded into the background like the distant hum of traffic. His world was the cot, the damp cloth, and Anna's calming presence. He slept in the armchair beside Miriam when it happened.A sound cut through the silence of his head—not a chime, not a ping, but a harsh, electronic shriek, like an EKG flatline. It was a sound of raw, systemic warning.The entire interface flashed, not red, but a hot, bloody #FF0000—the low zero of the color scale, a warning hue so strong it appeared to strike him like a blow. Text poured across his vision, broken and frantic.***

The lull was the initial sign of victory. It was not a peaceful silence, but the hollow, exhausted quiet that comes after the storm. The incessant, background rumble of coughing that had been the dismal tally of the Red Zone had ceased. The manic, red-alert chimes of the System had fallen silent. All that remained was the gentle whoosh of wind over the charred earth where Zone 2 had once stood, and the subdued, methodical work of the decontamination crews.The [LEVEL RED] alert in Reuben's dream, which had smoldered for weeks like an ember on his conscience, at last flashed and dissipated. In its place was a simple, somber line.**CONTAMINATION EVENT: CRIMSON STAR. STATUS: CONTAINED.****FINAL PROJECTED FATALITIES (Pre-Intervention): ~1,428,000.****ACTUAL FATALITIES (Post-Intervention): 8,447.****LIVES SAVED: 1,419,553.**It was a number too big to comprehend. It was a figure. But the faces behind it were not. He saw the young mother he'd redirected from a stretched clinic to clear

The Riverbend neighborhood of Harbor City's community center was packed to the rafters. The air, thick with the wet promise of rain, vibrated with a kind of electricity—the buzz of interested attention. On a temporary stage made of diverted pallets, Professor Reuben Stone, previously an overlooked scholar, spoke to a sea of faces illuminated by the warm glow of a portable projector."The map doesn't lie," Reuben said, his voice firm but with a carrying tone to the rear of the room. A holographic projection, a courteous flourish of the Outbreak System he had just entered, glowed before him to one side. It indicated a close-up map of Harbor City, the Riverbend community radiating a soft, healthy green. "Three weeks ago, this community was a probable hot zone for a dengue outbreak.". The System identified a dozen water collection points that had been missed, perfect breeding grounds for the Aedes aegypti mosquito. He clicked a small device in his hand. The map focused on specific roofto