The fluorescent lights of the Ispire headquarters, which usually felt pretty energizing, now seemed to hum with a sickening, high-pitched frequency that vibrated right behind Amara's eyes. She sat at her desk, the dual monitors glowing with spreadsheets that might as well have been written in an alien dialect. For three hours, she had stared at the same row of data, her fingers frozen over the keyboard.
Every time she tried to focus on the numbers, her mind performed a violent flick back to the folder in Darien's office. The grainy, long-distance photo of Hansen holding a high-caliber rifle with the cold, practiced ease of a professional executioner.
