CHAPTER 84

Médecins Sans Frontières Outpost – Mali – 3 Months Later

The sandstorm howled against the makeshift hospital tent like a living thing, throwing handfuls of grit against the reinforced canvas with the persistence of desperation. Inside, the air was thick despite the industrial fans fighting a losing battle against the Saharan heat. The tent smelled of antiseptic and dust, hope and fear—the universal scent of field medicine in places the world had forgotten.

Griffin adjusted the neural interface headset on a trembling six-year-old girl named Amara, his movements gentle despite the urgency thrumming through everyone present. She was our first real-world test—not a simulation or a controlled laboratory environment, but a dying child whose motor neurons were degrading so rapidly that she'd lost the ability to walk in the past month.

Her mother, Fatima, clutched my hand with the desperate strength of someone drowning. Her callused fingers told the story of a life spent farming marginal la