The voice on the other side of the door was not Seven. It was something that had learned from Seven — and had then learned to forget. It spoke like a student who had become the teacher, and it had been waiting for exactly this moment.

Tehran tightened its grip on the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, a day after Iran's Revolutionary Guard seized two vessels — defying a ceasefire that was already fraying at the edges, and pushing Brent crude past $100.

The Lantern found Wei's channel in eleven seconds. What it found behind the encryption was not a person. It was a door — and someone had been standing on the other side of it for eleven months.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard seized two vessels and attacked a third in the Strait of Hormuz hours after Trump declared the ceasefire extended indefinitely — and thousands more US troops are on their way.

Japan officially scrapped its decades-old ban on exporting lethal weapons on April 21, ending a system that had restricted defense sales to five non-combat categories since the 1960s. It's the biggest shift in Tokyo's security policy in decades — and neighbors are watching closely.