The CFO stopped two paces away and the hallway refused to move.
He carried the kind of stillness that rooms learn to obey. His eyes took inventory without blinking. Door. Phone. Legal pad with LEDGER at the top. Brown bag with Nearlight ink bleeding faintly through the bottom. Elias from Systems with his hands quiet. Sofia's capped pen ready to become a sentence.
"You are very busy," he said.
"We are working," Ava said.
"The board is meeting," he said.
"And the street is measuring," she said.
He glanced at the legal pad again. "You post like a newsroom," he said. "This is not a paper. It is a company."
"It is a company on paper," Sofia said. "Receipts are paper."
He let the corner of his mouth move a fraction. "Clever," he said.
"Plain," Ava said.
The desk phone hummed once. Security listened and nodded. "Lobby panels steady," he said. "Sixteen steady. Comms pinned the cut note with names."
"Names," the CFO said, mild. "A strange choice for contrition."
"Credit for the cut," Ava said. "Not for contrition. For work."
The door opened as far as a palm. Counsel stepped out and did not step all the way. "Mr. Sterling," he said into the seam.
Noah reached the threshold and stopped where the line lives. He did not look at the CFO. He looked at Ava's left shoulder and then at the small block letters that said LEDGER. His hands were empty and steady.
"Instruction," he said.
"Name a number," she said.
"Three hundred and six posted in the footer," he said.
"Name a next," she said.
"Riverlight at twelve thirty one," he said.
She touched two fingertips to the top corner of the pad and he gave the smallest nod, almost nothing, exactly enough. Counsel's hand waited, patient as a hinge.
"Inside," counsel said.
Noah went back into the room. The seam closed a fraction. It did not seal.
The CFO's gaze tracked none of that and all of it. "I require your team to suspend public posting until the board concludes," he said. "Governance before street."
"You can require what you like," Ava said. "Comms routes to the pin."
"Comms reports to finance," he said.
"Comms reports to outcomes in public today," she said.
His smile did not change. It was a thing that had been practiced for mirrors, not people. "You misunderstand who signs checks," he said.
"You misunderstand who signs letters on glass," she said.
Elias cleared his throat once. "Postmortem is live," he said. "Band cut at bezel then source. CFO console origin recorded. Names posted with spell check."
The CFO did not flinch. "Origin does not equal intent," he said.
"It equals path," Ava said. "We are repairing paths."
A runner slid out of the elevator with a flat parcel and a printout stapled to the top. "Riverlight consent form and a paper bag," he said. "Owner asked us to write the time inside the crease."
Sofia wrote 12:31 inside the fold and handed it back. "Tell them the bag is theirs," she said. "We brought two."
The runner grinned and vanished toward the stairs the way speed vanishes into purpose.
The desk phone purred again. Security held it to air. A voice Ava knew as Vendor Operations became part of the hallway.
"This is Vendor Ops," it said. "Nearlight, we confirm the owner for the weighting parameter under dispute is Nearlight's FIN team. Not vendor. You may cite vendor as confirming party."
Sofia had the pen moving before the sentence finished. She wrote in block print that cameras could understand. "Vendor confirms Nearlight FIN owns weighting parameter," she read. "Not vendor."
"Please add that Vendor will publish its own note at close," the voice said. "We prefer shared language."
"We will add," Sofia said.
"Thank you," the voice said. The line clicked and did not linger.
The CFO's smile stopped pretending and became smaller. "You will remove that line," he said.
"It is a fact," Ava said.
"It is unhelpful," he said.
"It helps the reader," she said.
The door opened wider. Vivian's aide stood in the seam without crossing it. "The Chair requests a status one liner for the handout," she said. "No adjectives."
Sofia lifted a page that already wore the four words Ava had written. The aide read them, nodded once, and took the page in two fingers as if it were a coin.
"Time," Sofia said. "Twelve thirty four."
"Write the next header," Ava said. "Make the day teach itself."
Sofia waited with the pen poised.
Post the header: Receipts by Six.
She wrote it clean across the top margin of a fresh page, boxed it, and underlined the time. Below it she listed the queue in plain order. Riverlight Books. Ivy Square Tools. Silver Harbor Aid. Northside Pantry follow-up. Fable and Thread landlord PDF. Footer sum. Auditor note at close.
"Runner," Sofia said.
He arrived like a habit. She slipped him the page. He took it like an oath and ran toward the printer with his chest a little high because people like to carry banners that are smaller than flags and heavier than slogans.
The CFO watched the runner go. "You think a headline can save a day," he said.
"It does not save it," Ava said. "It organizes it."
He nodded to security as if security belonged to him. "Freeze the pin," he said.
Security did not move. His job today was to move only when the rule told him to.
"Comms," he said into the phone, "finance wants the pin frozen."
"Comms," the voice answered, "follows the street plan while the board meets. Pin stays live."
A hint of heat reached the CFO's eyes. It left without smoke. "You are making a mistake," he said.
"We are making a ledger," Ava said.
The elevator dinged. The Riverlight runner returned with a small rectangle of paper that smelled like ink and paper and a decision. He held it up and did not shake it even though his lungs wanted to.
"Checkout verified," he said. "Photo consented."
Sofia clipped the receipt to the ledger. "Riverlight Books at twelve thirty one," she read. "Witnessed by owner and Nearlight Comms. Bag archived."
"Footer sum," Ava said.
Sofia did the addition aloud so the hallway could hear math. "Four hundred and thirteen," she said. "Footer posted."
The CFO stepped nearer and read the number like a person reads a tide chart. "You cannot buy forgiveness with three figures," he said.
"We can buy proof," Ava said. "Forgiveness is not the product."
A second print hit the runner's hand as if the building had dropped it there. He handed it to Sofia. It was Vendor's formal line, short and clean. She clipped it beneath the header and circled "Nearlight FIN" once.
"Appendix v0.1 must note ownership of the parameter," she said. "Under 'who owns which knobs'."
"After the board," the CFO said.
"Before," Ava said. "We post now."
Sofia looked at her empty hands where a tablet should be and was not. "We need a typed addendum," she said. "Or a photographed page."
"Photograph the page," Ava said. "Write the correction in plain text with time and vendor acknowledgment. Systems posts the image. Comms mirrors to the pin."
Elias nodded. "We can post from the console downstairs," he said. "Caption will read Appendix v0.1 corrected at twelve thirty seven."
The CFO held his breath like a man considering whether to bite or speak. "You will not edit documentation while executive session is open," he said.
"We will correct a fact in the appendix that governs the day," Ava said. "The board's session does not pause the street."
The door latch clicked twice in quick succession. A signal. The kind that means both wait and come in depending on who hears it.
Sofia looked at the legal pad as if paper could be courage and instruction at once. "Say the line," she said, very softly.
Ava took the pen and wrote it where the camera would catch it when the runner held it chest high.
Receipts before rooms.
The latch clicked again, clearer.
The CFO turned toward the door. "Executive session continues," he said, almost pleasant now. "Do not embarrass the company while we are trying to save it."
"Do not contradict the door we already fixed," Ava said.
The aide opened the seam. "Ms. Chen," she said. "Chair asks you to remain outside. Ms. Anton, post what you must. Mr. Sterling will deliver a summary."
"Understood," Ava said.
Sofia lifted the pen. "Appendix note wording," she said.
"Write," Ava said. "Ownership of the disputed weighting parameter resides with Nearlight Finance," she dictated. "Vendor confirms. Criteria v0.1 corrected at twelve thirty seven. Posted to appendix and pin."
The pen moved. The letters were slow because slow reads better later. Elias held out his hand for the page and took it the way people take things that matter. Security watched the phone and not the CFO and not the door.
The CFO smiled again as if a light behind glass had remembered how to work. "You are making quite a show," he said.
"It is work," Ava said. "You can tell because it leaves paper."
Elias took two steps toward the elevator with the page. The runner fell in beside him with the bag. The hallway looked like a small parade of useful things.
The latch made one more sound, not a crack, a throat clearing. The executive session shifted its weight on the other side of the door.
Sofia held the addendum with two fingers while the ink set. "We need the appendix image downstairs in thirty seconds," she said. "If a screen fights it, we cut and cite."
"Run," Ava said.
They ran. The CFO did not.
He watched Ava, and Ava watched the door, and the door whispered its hinge the way doors do when they are about to let something through that will make the hour different.