Eight Dollars and a Hundred Engines The night air on Easton Avenue smelled sharp—gasoline and rain mixing like fire and water. Sienna Clark stood under the flickering light of a tired, rundown gas station. In her hand, eight crumpled dollars—her last eight dollars. She stared at the vending machine inside like it might judge her for even thinking about it. Those eight dollars were supposed to buy breakfast for her daughter, Maya, tomorrow. But tonight, everything changed. A Harley sputtered and died, leaving a deep silence. Then she saw him—a

The rain didn’t just fall — it came crashing down like someone was sweeping a broom across the sky. It was loud, hard, and rude, shaking windows and echoing through the streets. Under a cracked glass bus shelter, a young woman sat curled up, clutching her little girl close. Water ran down the bench, soaking their clothes, and every footprint they left vanished under the rain within seconds. Angela Reed was only twenty-six, but she looked years older. She was tired in a way no sleep could fix. Her once-golden

The glass walls of Meridian Global Systems swallowed the Manhattan night and spit it back as a glittering grid—an ocean of ambition sparkling against the darkness. Nathan Carter stood at the heart of it, hands pressed against the mahogany desk he’d bought the year Meridian went public, feeling every one of his fifteen years of work tighten into one unbearable, impossible moment. Red alerts exploded across the monitors like bleeding flowers. Windows cascaded into each other; icons vanished and reappeared, then disappeared forever. Accounts blinked out, logs corrupted, transactions reversed.