Across the room, something kept pulling my attention without asking for it.
I didn’t know her.
That was the first thing that registered, quiet but immediate. New face. Wrong room for it. She sat at the table like she was trying to keep pace with something already in motion,pen moving steadily across the page in front of her, not fast, not frantic, but constant. Like stopping would cost her more than pushing through. She didn’t interrupt. Didn’t insert herself into anything that didn’t directly land in front of her. Just listened.
A strand of hair slipped loose near her temple, and she pushed it back without looking up, the motion quick, almost automatic, like she’d already done it a dozen times and hadn’t managed to make it stick. It fell forward again a minute later. She did it again.
I looked away before it turned into something I had to think about.
Voices circled the space, overlapping, sharp in places, controlled in others. Decisions being made. Positions taken. People talking like they already knew what this was and how it was going to play out, like the version of it in their heads had settled into something they could work with.
I let it pass through without stepping into it. Didn’t feel the need to. Not yet.
My fingers flexed once against my arm, the tape pulling tight across my knuckles, and that was enough.
Concrete.
Fluorescent lights.
The hum of something overhead that didn’t quite fade into the background no matter how long you sat with it.
I could still feel the bench under me if I thought about it too long. Cold. Unforgiving. Bolted into place like it expected you to test it. The kind of place that moved you through steps whether you were ready for them or not—name, ID, questions asked without interest in the answers. I’d sat there long enough for the adrenaline to drain out of my system, long enough for everything else to settle in behind it.
By the time they brought me in front of a judge, the skyhad already started to shift, gray light pressing in through windows set too high to see anything through. Charges pending. Release granted. Words that sounded routine, like this wasn’t the first time they’d said them that morning.
It probably wasn’t.
I had seen worse hits go unchecked.
The thought landed where everything else had been sitting, steady and unmoving, not loud enough to pull attention but not quiet enough to ignore either.
The room hadn’t slowed down while I’d been catching up to it.
I shifted my weight slightly, the fabric of my hoodie pulling across my shoulders, grounding me in something real while the conversation kept circling without me. I could have stepped in. Could have corrected half of what they were saying. Could have told them exactly how it had gone down. I didn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered.
Instead, my attention settled fully on the stranger across from me.
She still hasn’t spoken since she answered my question, but she was tracking everything, eyes moving just enough to follow the shifts in conversation without drawing attention to it. Like she knew she was being watched and had decided not to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her figure it out in real time.
I held her gaze for a second longer than necessary when she finally looked back at me, letting the glare pressurize just enough to see if she would break under it.
Her expression didn’t shift. Her posture didn’t collapse. If anything, she settled more firmly into it, like she had decided—quietly, without making it obvious—that she wasn’t going to be the weakest person in the group.
That was new.
The room moved around us, conversation sifting, decisions starting to form as Charlotte began dismissing people with clipped instructions that didn’t leave room for questions. Legal first, already halfway out the door before she finished speaking, then operations, each one peeling off with a task and a timeline like this had been expected, like they had all been waiting for the moment something like this would land on the table.
“Draft the holding statement,” Char barked, her attention already split between the room and the phone in her hand as she moved through directives without pausing to confirm anyone was keeping up. “No speculation, no added detail. I want language that holds under pressure.”
A voice answered from somewhere to my left, quick and automatic, already moving. “Understood.”
“Coordinate with media relations,” she continued, not looking up. “We need timing locked in before this gets out. I don’t want to be reacting to someone else’s version of this.”
“It already is,” someone muttered, just loud enough to be heard and immediately regretted.
The room abruptly halted. The air completely sucked out with three simple, shaky words.
The phone in Char’s hand buzzed. She didn’t respond to the comment. Didn’t ask for clarification. Instead, she went still in a way that felt more deliberate than anything she had done since I walked in, her focus dropping to the screen as she watched whatever had just come through.