CHAPTER 186 — WHEN TRUST BECAME A THREAT
The change did not announce itself loudly, yet Elena felt it the moment she stepped into the room again. It was not in the screens or the shifting data, not in the steady movement of the system as it continued rewriting itself beneath layers no one had designed. It was in the atmosphere, in the way the silence pressed heavier than before, as if something invisible had taken shape and settled among them. Nothing had collapsed overnight, nothing had visibly broken, yet the sense of control that had always defined this place no longer felt absolute.
