Aegis was back at the Consortium building sooner than she expected. Once again, it was the kind of place designed to make you feel small and poor the moment you walked through the door.
This time, the atmosphere felt different. Everyone she passed gave her these little sideways glances, like they were waiting to see if she'd burst into flames or get dragged off in chains.
[Sorry to disappoint, folks. Not today.]
She sat at one end of a long conference table, Evelyn at her side with a stack of documents organized into neat folders. Across from them sat Accountant Perris Coldwell, a thin man with spectacles perched on his nose and the kind of face that suggested he'd never smiled in his entire life. His fingers were ink-stained, and his eyes had that particular sharpness that came from spending decades staring at numbers and finding the discrepancies hidden within them.
Two clerks flanked him, ready to take notes on everything that was said.
