POV: Emilia Conti
They gave me time.
That was their mistake.
Reassignment didn't remove me from the system—it slowed me down just enough to see it clearly. No pager. No constant emergencies demanding instinct over thought. Just space.
And space, when you know how to use it, becomes leverage.
I started with emails.
Not the obvious ones. Not the ones sent to me. I pulled archived threads—committee memos, policy drafts, minutes from meetings I'd once skimmed between cases. Language I'd trusted because it sounded neutral.
It wasn't.
Words like streamlining.
Operational balance.
Role optimization.
They appeared in clusters. Always after disruption. Always attached to people who asked the wrong questions and then quietly disappeared from relevance.
I wasn't special.
I was late.
By Wednesday, I had a timeline.
Not of actions—but of responses.
Every time someone forced accountability, the system didn't retaliate.
It was repositioned.
I printed everything.
