Chapter 162

# Chapter 162 RUVAN The data streams never stopped. Even now, in the predawn quiet of my private laboratory, information flowed through neural pathways engineered to process what conventional minds would consider overwhelming. Trade analytics from seventeen nations, atmospheric pressure changes across six continents, and the subtle electromagnetic signatures of enhanced individuals scattered across the globe—all of it threading through my consciousness in patterns that would have driven an unmodified human to madness. I had learned to find peace in the numbers. Where others saw chaos, I saw symphony. But this morning, discord crept through the harmonies. I stood before a wall of holographic displays, each one showing a different aspect of the integration protocols we had spent sixteen months perfecting. Public trust indexes remained steady at eighty-one percent globally—a remarkable achievement considering the fear that had dominated just two years ago. Enhanced-conventional collaborat