The silence in the penthouse guest room was not peaceful; it was a vacuum, dense and heavy, sucking all comfort from the air. Elara didn't sleep. She couldn't. The plush, impersonal luxury of the spare bedroom felt like a gilded cage, its walls pressing in with the weight of her own naivety.
She sat rigid on the edge of the bed, long past the hour when the city's lights outside the window blurred into a silent, sparkling river. The only illumination was the cold, clinical glow of her phone screen, casting sharp shadows across her pale face. On it, a digital copy of the document that now defined her existence. She had read it a dozen times since the confrontation in the lobby, but this time, she was not skimming for reassurance. She was excavating for truth, and each word was a shovelful of dirt revealing a deeper, darker pit.
Reassigned under Board Authority.
