The numbers appeared first.97.3% chance of death.Alex Thompson saw them hovering in his vision like burning gold filaments as his Mercedes-AMG GT spun across three lanes of rain-slicked highway. Glass exploded inward in a crystalline storm. Metal shrieked against asphalt. The world tumbled in a nauseating carousel of headlights, darkness, and the massive chrome grille of the jackknifing semi-truck bearing down on him.Time stretched. Each microsecond became an eternity of perfect, terrible clarity.He watched the passenger airbag deploy in slow motion, white fabric blooming like a deadly flower. Watched his phone skitter across the dashboard, Maya's name still glowing on the screen from their interrupted call. Watched the speedometer needle drop from seventy to fifty to thirty as friction fought momentum in a battle his car was losing.The semi-truck's horn blared, a sound like the end of the world.94.1% chance of death.The numbers changed. Flickered. Recalculated with every shift

Alex stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse, watching New Eden wake beneath him. Sixty-eight stories up, the city looked like a circuit board come to life. Morning traffic flowed through streets in patterns of red and white light. Pedestrians moved in clusters and streams, their paths weaving around each other with unconscious choreography.Holographic advertisements flickered across building facades, cycling through products and promises in rhythmic succession. He'd stood at these windows a thousand times. But he'd never seen this before.Numbers floated above the streets like digital rain. Percentages, probabilities, odds cascading across his vision in golden script. He watched them calculate and recalculate with each passing second, each minor variable shift.73.2% chance the traffic light at Fifth and Sterling would turn green in the next eight seconds. It did.89.7% chance the morning commuter train would arrive at Union Station on time. He checked his watch, wait

Maya Chen sat in her apartment at two in the morning, surrounded by probability equations that refused to resolve.Chalk covered every wall. White lines intersected and diverged in patterns that would look like madness to anyone lacking training in probability mathematics. To Maya, they represented Alex Thompson's developing power signature, tracked across the past forty-eight hours since the accident.The equations didn't make sense. His probability distortions grew stronger by the hour, but the growth pattern defied all historical precedent. Most emergent manipulators took months to progress from sight to influence. Alex had jumped from unconscious survival manipulation to deliberate probability nudging in less than two days.Unprecedented. Dangerous. Exactly what Cassandra Vale would need.Maya's phone buzzed. Elder Thorne. She answered immediately."He came to the cathedral," Thorne said without preamble. "Met him at midnight as planned.""And?""He's stronger than we thought. Pro

The safe house sat wedged between a noodle shop and an abandoned electronics repair store in Lower New Eden's Crimson District. Alex stood across the street, studying the building through rain that had started falling an hour ago and showed no signs of stopping.Nothing about the structure screamed "safe." Three stories of brick and crumbling mortar. Windows covered with security bars that had rusted decades ago. Graffiti layered the walls in abstract patterns that might have been art or territorial markers. The kind of building Alex would normally walk past without noticing.Perfect anonymity through aggressive ordinariness.He'd taken a circuitous route from his penthouse. Three different trains. Two cab rides. An hour walking through districts he'd never visited despite living in New Eden his entire life. The city looked different down here. Grittier. More honest. Upper New Eden hid its decay behind glass and chrome. Lower New Eden wore its scars openly.Alex checked his phone. 6:4

Keeper headquarters existed in the last place Alex expected: a government building.The Department of Statistical Analysis occupied four floors of a brutalist concrete tower in Upper New Eden's administrative district. Gray walls. Fluorescent lighting. Cubicles filled with bureaucrats analyzing spreadsheets. Everything designed to bore observers into looking away.Perfect camouflage."Statistics," Maya explained as they rode the elevator to the fourth floor. "Probability and statistics are mathematically linked. The Keepers hide in plain sight by pretending to be government data analysts. Nobody questions why statistical department needs high security clearance or works odd hours."The elevator opened onto a hallway identical to every government corridor Alex had ever seen. Beige walls. Worn carpet. Motivational posters about efficiency and teamwork. Three people in business casual walked past, deep in conversation about regression analysis.Maya led him to a door marked "Conference R