The projector screen dies.
A flicker. A final shudder of light against the wall. Then darkness swallows the last pie chart, the last graph, the last carefully constructed lie.
The room lights hum back to life.
Papers shuffle. Pens click. Throats clear.
The executive team exchanges quick, practiced glances—the kind that say everything and nothing at the same time.
Everic sits at the head of the long table, the city skyline stretching beyond the glass wall behind him. Relaxed. Composed. Beside him, I sit. At the other end, our "business partners" smile with their mouths while their eyes calculate something else entirely.
Something hungry.
Something hidden.
For two hours, I've been drowning.
Not in their words. Not in their proposals or their counteroffers or their carefully constructed arguments.
Their minds.
