The surrender calls landed within hours of each other, as if Aqua Marinus and Dr. Vita Curex had coordinated capitulation with the same precision they'd tried to marshal against civilians.
Dr. Curex appeared first—hair pinned back, posture precise, eyes rimmed with a week's worth of lost sleep. Stripped of monopoly and myth, the woman who'd overseen sixty percent of the continent's care looked like what she had always been at core: a clinician faced with data she could no longer deny.
"Arthur Nightingale," she began, voice steady by force of habit, "we need to discuss the future of medical services on the Central Continent."
"I've always respected Nexarion's practitioners," I said. "Your embargo suggested different priorities than patient welfare."
The flinch was small, but honest. "A miscalculation. I underestimated your technology—and your refusal to trade lives for leverage."
