SOPHIE'S POV
The morning sun on St. Jude's Key didn't simply rise; it ignited.
The island had a way of turning light into spectacle. Dawn crept slowly over the Atlantic horizon, but once the sun cleared the waterline, it burst across the compound's glass architecture like a controlled detonation. The briefing room walls were made entirely of smart glass. When the sunlight struck them, it fractured into thousands of sharp reflections that scattered across the holographic projections hovering above the central table.
London glowed before us, not the real city, of course, but a living digital twin of it, streets mapped in luminous blue grids, buildings extruded into translucent towers, financial institutions highlighted in pulsing gold.
The heart of the map was the Heller-Vance Vault.
