"I didn't fix it, Mark," she said, pulling up her blanket. "Miradore did. Now go get some sleep. And tell your girlfriend’s cousin to stick to video games."

Three dots appeared. Then: "Yeah. Weird night. My laptop’s acting up. Just restarted and now there’s a pop-up asking for some admin key I don’t have."

Mark let out a shaky laugh. "Maya... I’m in Lisbon. You’re in Seattle. How did you just... fix my computer from bed?"

Maya tapped the device card. Miradore’s dashboard glowed to life, showing her a live map: Lisbon, a narrow street in the Alfama district. Next to it, a red flag: Someone had tried to root the device—to bypass all her encryption, her VPN requirements, her endpoint protection.

A pause. Then Mark exhaled. "My girlfriend’s cousin. He’s a CS student. He said he could make my laptop 'run faster' by tweaking the kernel. I thought he was just... I don’t know, showing off."