A few days passed with the grinding, methodical persistence of power doing what power always did when left unattended: stalling, posturing, and pretending motion equaled progress.
Chris shadowed Dax through all of it.
He sat in briefings that lasted twice as long as necessary. He watched committees reinvent the same objection with new vocabulary. He listened to men with impressive titles argue as if conceding an inch would collapse their identity entirely.
By the third day, he wasn't sure if he was missing something fundamental or if everyone else was deliberately wasting oxygen.
He tested the theory carefully.
Sometimes he asked questions. Direct, clean questions that should have shortened discussions.
They didn't.
Sometimes he stayed silent, observed the flow of conversation, and tracked where arguments stalled and why. Ego, almost always. Leverage, frequently. Fear of being seen as the first to bend, constantly.
