(Sean's POV)
I close the blinds.
The metal slats snap down one by one — vertical, uniform, the sound of a room sealing itself off from the twenty-second floor. The city disappears. The daylight goes gray, then dim, then just the cold wash from my laptop screen.
I sit.
The chair is leather. Expensive. The kind that molds to your spine and tells you you've made it. Right now it feels like sitting in a vault.
I open the livestream.
The browser loads the International Robotics Conference homepage. I've had the tab open since this morning. The keynote schedule is memorized — Hall C, 2 p.m. Eastern, Dr. Rebecca Bose-King presenting the K2 Medical-Assist Platform. I've read the session description eleven times. I will not be reading it a twelfth.
The feed loads.
The hall fills my screen.
