The photograph arrived without explanation.
It showed some kind of mass. Dark grey and pulsating. It was hovering far above the North Atlantic. It resembled a cyclone but there was no eye of this storm, no rotation. Just layers. Like folds of gauze, stacked and suspended. The sky around it was eerily clear. That was the first impossibility.
Dr. Mairead Finn saw the image at 6:32 a.m. It was forwarded to her personal account from an encrypted Ministry server. The subject line read only: "Come in. Immediately."
Dr. Finn arrived at the North Strand Climate Monitoring Facility before sunrise. The conference room was already full, unusual for a Wednesday.
Technicians. Military liaisons. Two senior meteorologists and a man from the Department of Anomalous Phenomena — a department that, officially, didn't exist.
No one spoke for the first ten minutes. They just stared at the image projected on the main wall, a still frame from a weather satellite feed.