Five years after the convergence crisis, Coalition-complete stood together on Singapore facility's observation deck, watching the sunset paint the sky orange across the Straits of Malacca. Rama felt Sekar's hand in his, Nakamura's presence beside them completing their unit, standing together exactly as they had on graduation day five years earlier, when everything had seemed simpler than the complexity reality had since demanded.
Five years. Felt simultaneously like yesterday and lifetime ago both.
"Ancient-class entity accepted limited access terms," Nakamura reported quietly. "Negotiation concluded successfully. Entity manifests Singapore facility next week demonstrating dimensional framework architecture knowledge exchange agreed conditionally. First time Coalition engages Ancient-class entity through cooperation rather than combat exclusively. Rodriguez called it paradigm shift historically significant."
