The cinder she carried—something small, dark, and hot in more ways than the eye could see—sat in her pocket. She had found it wedged in the machinery at the heart of the factory amid charred bearings and melted wiring: a tiny bead of unknown alloy that hummed under her palm and warmed her skin. It was not meant to be public, and yet it was the seed of the rumor: the factory’s proprietary sensor, its tracking bead, the excuse that turned a rescue into a theft.