USA, White House
The newsrooms had been running on a single loop all day. On every channel the same headline crawled along the bottom: ATROPOS DEADLINE — HOURS LEFT. The anchor's voice came through bright and brittle.
"The Atropos deadline approaches. Only a few hours remain. What will the governments do? Is Atropos really capable of killing people with a single word?" she asked, leaning into the camera. Clips rolled behind her: the masked figure smiling into the lens, frozen frames of the prison feeds, the headlines flashing like sparks.
Clerics and pundits filled the next segment. One religious leader, speaking with the fervor of someone trying to tame panic, called her a demon. Another pleaded for prayer and calm. Social feeds overflowed with conspiracy, with prayers, with people yelling for answers. The studio cut to crowds outside embassies, to markets where shoppers kept looking up as if the sky might fall.
