### Chapter Three
When she closed her eyes this time, the presence responded immediately.
Not verbally. Not passively. Not neutrally.
Directed.
The baseline she'd mapped didn't dissolve - it tilted. Pressure gradients nudged. Failure thresholds softened. The system adjusted as if someone had reached in and begun tuning parameters she hadn't touched yet.
They didn't announce it.
They didn't frame it as help.
They simply demonstrated what happened when certain constraints were relaxed and others enforced.
Climate volatility dampened—not erased, just narrowed. Supply chains smoothed. Loss reduced to tolerable margins. Human suffering converted from spikes into plateaus.
Efficient.
Too efficient.
Her body reacted before her thoughts fully caught up - shoulders locking, breath held just a second too long. The realization had weight now. Enough to show.
She understood it instantly, in the way she understood her own work.
This wasn't nourishment.
This was mass palatability.
Removing sharp notes. Suppressing bitterness. Making something survivable at scale by sanding down the edges that made it _alive_.
She opened her eyes.
"Stop," she said.
The presence and process both stilled - not instantly, but deliberately.
"What are you changing?" she asked. "Specifically."
A pause. Then:
"Stabilization requires authority within your systems."
There it was.
Clean. Bloodless.
She swallowed, took a breath.
"Show me the cost," she said.
"In human terms."
The light shifted.