(Dr. Aisha's POV)
The 25th floor was her sanctuary, her mind made manifest in glass and steel. From her desk, Aisha Sani commanded a view of the city she had helped shape, a chessboard where she was the undisputed grandmaster. Most people who entered this room brought the scent of their own anxiety with them—a pheromone of need that clung to their expensive suits. It was a smell she had long learned to disregard.
Adams Dared had been different.
He had entered not with the stench of desperation, but with the quiet, grounded energy of a man who had already lost everything and was therefore unafraid. He hadn't tried to sell her a polished version of his past. He had offered her the raw, unvarnished truth of his failure. Recalibration. It was a good word. An engineer's word. She appreciated engineers.
Now, two days after their meeting, Habiba placed a slim document on her desk. "The preliminary strategy from Mr. Dared for the 'Eagle' acquisition, Hajiya."
Aisha finished the line of code she was writing before looking up. She preferred the clean logic of programming to the messy variables of human resources. She took the document, expecting a standard corporate risk-assessment template, padded with jargon and cautious, cover-your-ass recommendations.
What she held was not a report. It was a blueprint for narrative warfare.
It was concise, barely five pages. The first page was not an executive summary, but a stark list of what he called "Ignition Points"—the founder's most volatile public statements, each paired with a probability rating and a projected media lifespan. Not just the what, but the when and how long.
The second page laid out "Containment Protocols," but they were not defensive. They were agile, almost offensive maneuvers. For a potentially damaging tweet, he didn't recommend a bland apology. He proposed a pre-emptive, live Q&A session focusing on the "passion behind innovation," subtly reframing recklessness as revolutionary zeal.
The third page was the masterstroke. It was titled "The Controlled Burn." He proposed deliberately leaking a minor, manageable aspect of the founder's "unconventional" management style to a friendly journalist. "Let the market absorb a small, curated dose of his volatility now," he wrote, "so the system builds antibodies. A large, unexpected outbreak later would be far more damaging."
It was ruthless. It was brilliant. It was the kind of strategic foresight born from having been blindsided oneself.
Aisha read it twice. The first time, she analyzed the strategy. The second time, she analyzed the strategist.
This was not the work of a man simply trying to keep a job. This was the work of a mind that had been shattered and had chosen to reassemble itself into something sharper, more resilient. He wasn't just managing a message; he was architecting a reality. He understood that perception was not just about controlling information, but about pre-emptively shaping the ecosystem in which that information would be received.
She leaned back in her chair, her gaze drifting to the window. Aso Rock stood immutable in the distance. Potential was a currency she traded in, and it was a currency most people inflated. They showed her a flicker and called it a flame.
Adams Dared had not shown her a flicker. He had shown her the quality of the flint and the steel. He had shown her that the fire was still there, but it was no longer a wild, untamed blaze seeking to consume everything for its own glory. It was a focused, contained forge, capable of tempering steel.
She pressed the intercom. "Habiba."
"Yes, Hajiya?"
"Schedule a meeting with the legal and PR heads for the Eagle acquisition. Tomorrow, 10 AM. And ensure Mr. Dared is present."
There was a slight pause on the other end, a testament to the unusual nature of inviting a new, mid-level manager to a high-stakes executive meeting. "Of course, Hajiya."
Aisha ended the call. It was a risk. Throwing him into the deep end with seasoned executives who would view him with skepticism, if not outright disdain. They would see the scandal, the fallen titan. They would not see what she saw.
But a forge needed pressure to strengthen the metal. She had noticed his potential. Now, it was time to see if it could hold its edge under real-world stress. This meeting would be his first true test. Not on paper, but in the arena. She was not one for mentorship or hand-holding. Her method was simpler: she identified talent, and then she threw it into the fire. What emerged—ash or diamond—would tell her everything she needed to know.