Wren Ashford’s third cup of instant coffee had gone from “barely drinkable” to “evidence of a crime,” but she swallowed it anyway. The timer on her phone blinked in big, unfriendly numbers on the desk. 00:07:13. Seven minutes left on this practice exam. She bent over the paper, pen flying across the final question of the public service aptitude test. The overhead light hummed above her; the little studio apartment on the twenty-first floor of Honeycomb Towers was dead quiet, the kind of quiet that made the city outside feel like somebody had hit pause. Just one more question. If she didn’t get into government this year, she was out. Out of savings, out of patience, out of chances. Wren forced herself to ignore the sweat prickling at the back of her neck and focused on the logic puzzle. Four applicants, five interview slots, conflicting constraints. Easy—well, easy if your brain wasn’t pudding. “Applicant C cannot…” She worked the grid, crossed out possibilities, circled the answer with a decisive stroke. The timer hit zero. She dropped her pen, heart thudding. For half a second she just stared at the paper, waiting for that small internal voice that said you blew it this time to wake up and start monologuing. Nothing. Instead there was the faintest hint of something like pride. “I am,” she announced to the empty apartment, “a statistical miracle.” The ceiling did not congratulate her. Her old, battered laptop on the side table, however