Alex couldn't sleep.He lay on the cot in his small room, staring at stone ceiling, mind refusing to quiet. Tomorrow they'd face Vale. Tomorrow the distributed architecture would be tested in actual combat. Tomorrow seven people would risk consciousness fragmentation because he'd survived an impossible car crash.His phone glowed on the small table. 2:47 AM. The board vote was happening in six hours. By noon, Thompson Industries would either confirm his leadership or vote him out. Jenkins would present evidence of instability. The board would deliberate. Democracy would function exactly as designed.And Alex didn't care.A week ago, losing his company would have destroyed him. Now it felt like someone else's problem. Like watching a movie about a person who shared his name but wasn't actually him anymore.That realization was disturbing. Had he changed so fundamentally in seven days? Or had he always been this person, just buried under layers of corporate ambition and control obsessio

Cassandra Vale's expression shifted from amusement to calculation. She saw the distributed architecture stabilize. Saw seven consciousness functioning as coordinated whole. Saw her tactical disadvantage manifest."You think unity makes you strong," she said. "But it makes you vulnerable. Break one link, the entire architecture collapses."She attacked Patel. Probability spears aimed at the youngest Keeper, the one whose quantum entanglement held the architecture together.Alex saw the attack through seven perspectives simultaneously. Calculated optimal response across multiple tactical dimensions. Issued directives that flowed through the distributed consciousness like thought.Zhang's foundation stability reinforced Patel's position. Martinez's healing preemptively strengthened her consciousness against fragmentation. Santos prevented cascade from the impact. Reeves manipulated time around Patel, making the spears move slower relative to her perception. Okoye predicted the secondary

Three weeks passed in careful recovery.Alex spent the first week barely able to walk. His consciousness was stable but his body struggled to reconnect with a mind that existed differently now. The fragmentation had changed neural pathways. Scrambled muscle memory. He had to relearn basic coordination.The Keeper medical staff was patient. They'd seen this before, though never with seven people simultaneously. Fragmentation survivors always faced lengthy rehabilitation. The lucky ones regained most function. The unlucky ones spent years relearning how to exist.Alex was somewhere in the middle.By week two, he could navigate Keeper headquarters without assistance. His probability sight returned, though severely diminished. He saw odds and percentages occasionally, in flickering glimpses rather than constant cascade. His manipulation ability was nearly gone. He could nudge minor probabilities by a few percentage points. Nothing more.He was weaker than he'd been even after the extracti

The Probability Research Institute officially opened on a Tuesday morning in May, exactly one year after Alex's car crash.No grand ceremony. No press announcements. Just seven fragmented consciousness and a simple sign on the warehouse door: "PRI - Probability Research Institute. By Appointment Only."Their first visitor arrived within hours.She was young. Maybe nineteen. Looked like university student in jeans and oversized sweater. But her eyes held the same haunted quality Alex recognized from his own mirror. She'd seen probability threads. Glimpsed futures. Been touched by power she didn't understand.Maya greeted her at the door. "Welcome to PRI. I'm Maya Chen, operations coordinator. How can we help?""I don't know if you can." The girl's voice trembled. "My name is Kenji Sato. I'm seeing things. Numbers. Percentages. Futures that haven't happened yet. My roommate said I should talk to someone before I go completely insane."Maya guided her inside. Through the quantum entangle

Five years later.Alex Thompson stood at the window of the Probability Research Institute's expanded headquarters, watching New Eden's sunset paint the sky in shades of gold and crimson. The city had grown. Changed. Evolved in ways he could barely track with his severely diminished probability sight.He was forty now. Gray threaded his dark hair. Lines marked his face from years of stress and fragmentation. He looked older than his age. Felt older than time itself.But he was alive. Coherent. Human.Behind him, the institute hummed with activity. Twenty-three students trained in probability manipulation under supervision of the fragmented seven. Research divisions pursued breakthrough theories. Prevention teams monitored New Eden for emerging manipulators. Recovery specialists helped fragmentation survivors rebuild consciousness.Five years of work. Five years of growth. Five years of building something that mattered more than quarterly earnings or market dominance ever had."Lost in