"Don't be a hero, Leo. I'm watching your taxi. Nice route. You always take the tunnel?"

For a single, eternal second, nothing happened. The taxi entered the tunnel, the overhead lights flickering in a strobe of orange and shadow. Then, Leo's own phone screen went black. Not a shutdown—a Miradore-initiated, hardware-level obliteration of every byte. In the taxi's cupholder, the driver's company-issued tablet, used for fare processing, flickered to life with the warning: DEVICE COMPROMISED. REPORT TO SECURITY. Then it, too, died.

Leo's blood turned to ice. He looked up. They were approaching the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. The driver was oblivious, humming along to a reggaeton beat.

Leo did the only thing he could. He stopped hesitating.

It was a gamble. A full wipe would cripple operations for days. But letting Tether keep the keys to the kingdom? That was a death sentence.

The taxi emerged from the tunnel into the glittering chaos of Midtown. Leo's phone was a dead brick. He had no way to know if it had worked. No way to call for help. He only had the memory of the red button, and the cold certainty that Tether was now just as blind as he was.