The morning had the particular quality of mornings she liked—no meetings until eleven, the office quiet except for the low hum of the building doing its work, her desk arranged exactly the way she had left it the night before. She had been in it for two hours already, deep in the quarterly performance metrics for Rora AI's infrastructure division, the kind of focused, granular work that required the whole of her attention and rewarded it with the specific satisfaction of a mind fully occupied.
Her phone buzzed on the desk.
She glanced at it with the automatic, peripheral attention of someone who had trained themselves not to break focus for notifications. Her hand was already moving to turn it face-down when she saw the name.
Liam.
She picked it up.
Hi, Aurora. We have a joint session scheduled for today. I'd like you to come.
She read it once. Then again.
