Rowan's office looked like a war room.
Papers covered every surface; ingredient lists, production schedules, quality control reports, supplier contracts. The whiteboard on the wall was filled with notes in Rowan's handwriting, timelines and chemical formulas and questions with no answers yet.
Rowan sat behind his desk, his tie was loosened, his sleeves were rolled up as his eyes scanned line after line of data with the kind of focused intensity that made everything else fade away.
Around the building, lights blazed in windows that should have been dark hours ago.
The production team was in the lab, re-testing every ingredient from scratch, running every possible contamination scenario.
The PR department occupied an entire conference room, phones constantly ringing, fingers working tirelessly on keyboards as they tried to control the media narrative that had already spun wildly out of control.
No one was allowed to leave until they had answers. As ordered by the CEO.
