The market stabilizes. Not with a dramatic reversal, but with the slow, anticlimactic return of ordinary trading: buyers absorb the dip, the NHS headline is revised into something less catastrophic, and pharma stocks settle into a range that no longer threatens anyone's collateral. Isabella's observation hold expires normally. PRAP's amber indicators fade back to green, one by one, like streetlights coming on after a power cut. The risk committee receives its scheduled report. The escalation email, delayed but not missing, arrives in the right inboxes at the right time. Blackridge shrugs off the turbulence the way large firms shrug off most turbulence: with a meeting, a memo, and the quiet collective agreement to never mention how close it got. The window you were supposed to exploit has closed. Not because anyone stopped you. Because you stopped yourself. Mango's message arrives at 11:47 PM. It is not angry. It is not threatening. It is worse than both of those things, because it is administrative: > *"We paid for a window. You watched it close. Reassigning the contract."* Dane does not call. Dane does not explain. Over the next week, you notice the absence in stages: first the encrypted channel goes quiet, then your access to the shared staging server returns a 403 error, then the burner email you used for cell communications stops receiving replies. Nobody fires you with a speech. They simply stop including you, the way an office stops inviting someone to meetings before HR sends the letter. You sit in your apartment and understand, with a clarity that arrives too late to be useful, that hesitation was not caution. It was a decision. And the cell read it as one. [[The Aftermath|See the aftermath]]