He arrived at seven fifty-one.
Same time as always.
The lobby recognized his badge. The elevator opened. The thirty-first floor assembled itself around him in the familiar sequence.
But the floor was different.
Not loudly. Not in a way that announced itself. The same desks, the same assistants, the same light coming through the same windows. But the quality of the attention when he stepped off the elevator was different from every other morning he had walked onto this floor.
People looked up.
Not the usual peripheral awareness of a new arrival. Deliberate. Brief. The specific look of people who had read something over the weekend and were now recalibrating what they knew.
The statement.
Of course.
He walked to his desk.
Sat down.
Logged in.
He opened the task list and began.
The first person to speak to him was not Damien.
