**LILA POV**
The day starts normally.
Coffee first. Stronger than it needs to be, bitter enough to wake every nerve at once, but I welcome the bite. It anchors me in routine. The packhouse is already awake when I arrive, sound layered and familiar in the way it always is when nothing is wrong. Footsteps moving with purpose. Voices overlapping without urgency. Phones ringing, not insistently, just enough to remind me the day has begun. Doors opening and closing in steady rhythm. The building feels lived in, functional, predictable.
Routine calls come in one after another. Patrol confirmations. Scheduling adjustments. Messages meant for people who are not at their desks yet. Requests are clean, expected, framed properly. Patterns settle quickly into the rhythm I’ve learned to read, the su
