The Cyrus Sermon

Erin Brandt has the best eye in the building. From the edit bay of Beacon — the megachurch her father built into a national voice — she cuts his sermons two frames at a time and makes the screens a frightened country has learned to trust.

Late one winter night, running the world's coverage back frame by frame, she finds a seam in it — a splice as clean as her own — and lets it go.

Then the fraying world exhales. A bloodless settlement holds; one calm figure no one can quite place is thanked on every feed; and from Beacon's pulpit Erin's father names him an instrument raised up by God, for such a time as this. The relief is enormous. The church has never been prouder.

But Erin knows the one thing about a hand that hides its work.

She has one too.