The Emergent Artifact 12 Heist

It took the best thief in the world five months to steal Emergent Artifact 12 from where a terrified government had hidden it, five weeks to figure out the expensive files that had made it possible had not just been planted by the artifact but were somehow part of it, five days to find and break into the compound of the billionaire who had hired him to steal the artifact, five minutes with the alien-looking topological monstrosity to realize he had been too late to destroy the now inactive device, five seconds looking into the eyes of the buyer to understand the artifact was not a single thing but an ever-expanding interlocking clockwork of things, and the last five beats of his heart to intuit he had been part of it too.