The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom had not slept in three days.
Outside the reinforced windows of Chequers, the countryside estate turned bunker. England's skies no longer obeyed the sun. The clouds above Buckinghamshire were gold-veined and motionless, as if stitched into place by a hand that had forgotten the purpose of weather. No birds flew. The wind no longer came from any direction. It was a still atmosphere.
Down the drive, a convoy of armored vehicles sat idle. None had moved since the resonance pulse two days prior when all electronics failed, save for a thin line of green light that now pulsed rhythmically through every circuit board. Military officials called it harmless. Scientists called it unprecedented and members of the clergy referred to it as divine.
The Prime Minister took in the new world with fear as she sat in her private office, eyes scanning the grainy, flickering reports that still reached her by paper.
Parliament had disbanded in silence and the King had not been seen in weeks. The financial markets were not crashing; they had simply ceased to function. The pound sterling no longer had value, not because it was rejected, but because value itself had been replaced by something else.
The population, meanwhile, vacillated between rage and reverence. Massive gatherings in shattered churches. Riots over rations that no longer needed trucks to be delivered. People prayed to screens that didn't show images, only symbols.
The Prime Minister did not know how to respond to something like that. Until the mirror in her office trembled.
It did not crack. It did not glow. It simply rippled; like the surface of water when a stone is dropped. She turned to look.
And the reflection was no longer hers.
It was an eye. Massive. Pale gold. Pupil shaped like a spiral, slowly tightening.
Then the words arrived.
"Go to your United Nations. "
Certainty, transmitted straight into her blood.
She could not move for several minutes.
Her aides came for her. None had seen anything. None had heard anything. But they looked at her with hollow expressions, as though they, too, had received a summons in their bones.
By that afternoon, she was on a military jet with no instruments, guided by wind patterns that did not make sense.
As they approached New York, the clouds parted in an unnatural rectangle, allowing a single corridor of blue to stretch between them and the broken skyline.
The city was silent.
From the air, she saw no cars. No crowds. No movement at all, except for the occasional flicker of light along the rooftops.
The UN building rose from the ground like a restored cathedral.
Gleaming. Reconstructed. Out of time.
And waiting.
As the plane descended, the Prime Minister clutched the armrest and wondered, not for the first time, if they had been wrong all along.
Wrong about power.
Wrong about the heavens.
Wrong about everything.