The room existed in a state of deliberate obscurity, with no windows or external cameras, located three floors below a nondescript office building in a city that didn't matter, accessed through corridors that weren't on any architectural plans.
The lighting was kept deliberately dim—not dark enough to impair vision, but subdued enough to make facial expressions harder to read, to create the kind of atmosphere where people spoke more carefully.
Seven figures sat around a circular table. No hierarchy visible in the seating arrangement, though anyone who understood organizational dynamics would have recognized the subtle cues, like who spoke first, who others deferred to, whose silence carried weight.
