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Gwendolyn’s POV

The sky did not fall all at once; it tore.

The left engine of the Gulfstream did not merely fail; it dissolved in a spectacular rain of white-hot titanium blades that sliced through the pressurized hydraulic lines of the wing like a serrated knife through silk. The aircraft shuddered, a deep, structural groan that vibrated up from the floorboards, through the soles of my boots, and directly into my failing neural graft.

For a microsecond, my vision flickered with green diagn