The emergency board session gets called at nine in the morning, which is unusual enough on its own to tell me something's gone wrong before anyone explains what. Victoria's already seated when I arrive, her face carefully composed, though I've learned to read the particular stiffness in her shoulders as something closer to alarm than her usual controlled calm. "A journalist reached out to the press office overnight," she says, once the room is full and the door is closed. "Questions about irregular shipping routes tied to Cross Enterprises. Specific enough that whoever's feeding them information has real access, not speculation." My stomach drops. The South Corridor. "How specific," Alexander asks, his voice carefully even, though I catch the tension in his jaw the second the question leaves his mouth. "Specific enough to name Doyle directly," Victoria says. "And specific enough to reference a shell entity connected to a name none of us have said out loud in this room before." D
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