「3:15 AM.」
「Senate Office Building Hearing Room.」
Time here seemed to have congealed, frozen by some viscous substance.
The hearing had been going on for seventeen straight hours.
The press gallery, once packed with reporters, was now mostly empty. Only a few interns and the stenographers in charge of the record remained, propping their eyelids open as they mechanically tapped at their keyboards.
The camera's red light was still on, its C-SPAN live feed faithfully transmitting the long, tedious scene to the few television screens across America that were not yet dark.
The faces at the chairman's dais had already changed three times.
The Republican Party Senators had implemented a shift system.
Every four hours, a new batch of fresh, energetic faces would walk in to replace their exhausted colleagues.
They held thick lists of questions in their hands. But in the witness chair, there was only one person.
Leo Wallace.
He had no replacement.
