#Chapter 200: The Strategy Shift

Simon didn’t waste time with apologies or protocol. He entered the conference room already mid-motion, the tablet in his hand aglow with clinical overlays and jagged scan results. He looked like a man walking in from a storm, soaked through with certainty. His jaw was tight, and his gaze didn’t waver as he marched to the head of the table. He didn’t ask if we had time, didn’t warm us up with qualifiers, he just set the tablet on the table, turned it so I could see, and spoke in the kind of tone that only followed sleepless nights and conclusive evidence. "Counter-frequencies won’t work," he said. "Not in any lasting way." I leaned in slowly, eyes adjusting to the clusters of red lines and overlaid graphs. The data was dense and incomprehensible at a glance, but something about the slope of the lines told me enough. I could read distress patterns, misfiring circuits in her brain, rhythmic loops that no longer resembled a hybrid or a wolf. "You mean she’s not flickering between s