Ten seconds. Maya’s screen flickered.

Her stomach dropped. The predictive engine was still running, but the execution layer—the part that actually sent trades—had frozen. Without it, Eagler IMC was just a fortune teller with no phone.

But two minutes later, chaos erupted. Competing firms who had rushed their own AI modules without fallbacks began sending garbage orders—their systems choked by unvalidated predictions. One rival’s algorithm bought 10,000 contracts at market price, then immediately sold them at a loss.

She grabbed the red emergency line. “Jenkins, pull the legacy execution handler from backup. Now.”