An Iranian delegation landed in Islamabad on Friday as US negotiators prepared to arrive, marking the first direct talks between the two sides since airstrikes escalated the five-week-old conflict. Pakistan's quiet diplomacy may have just pulled the world back from the brink.

Lin Xia makes a decision. The basement has other ideas.

Trump announced a two-week US-Iran ceasefire. Oil prices plummeted 16%. Markets rallied. Then the sun rose over the Strait of Hormuz — and Iran shut it down.

Lin Xia arrives at Purdue's Electrical Engineering building — the condemned, the sealed, the origin point. Forty years of quiet breathing, forty years of waiting.

Oil prices plunged 14% in hours after Iran and the US agreed to a two-week ceasefire, reopening the world's most critical oil chokepoint. The world held its breath. Then the markets didn't.