The headquarters of MKU loomed over the city like a monolith of silver and glass. Inside, the air was pressurized and smelled faintly of ozone and expensive espresso. It was a place where logic ruled and emotions were considered system errors.
Lisa smoothed down her skirt, her heart drumming a steady rhythm against her ribs. She thought of the tiny apartment she'd left that morning the chaos of her two brothers arguing over the last bit of cereal and her sister hunting for a lost shoe. This job wasn't just a career milestone; it was the lifeline her family needed.
"The CEO is expecting the quarterly diagnostics, but he doesn't like to be interrupted while he's coding," the floor manager whispered, looking frantic. "Just leave the tablet on the obsidian desk and do not make eye contact."
Lisa nodded, her expression calm despite the warning. She moved through the open-plan lab, past whirring robotic arms and glowing holographic displays, until she reached the top-floor office.
The office was freezing. Michael Sheng Xi sat behind a desk carved from a single slab of dark stone. At twenty-eight, he was a man who possessed a terrifying kind of beauty sharp, angular features, eyes like flint, and a presence that seemed to pull the oxygen out of the room. He didn't look up as she entered. His fingers flew across a translucent keyboard, his mind clearly buried deep in the logic of an AI neural network.
"You're thirty seconds late," Michael said, his voice a low, harsh rasp that cut through the silence.
"The elevator has a slight calibration lag in the vertical dampeners," Lisa replied smoothly, placing the tablet on his desk. "I'll submit a ticket to maintenance to save the next person those thirty seconds."
Michael's fingers paused. He looked up, his gaze cold and calculating. He didn't care about the elevator, and he certainly didn't care about the "next person." He stared at Lisa as if she were a line of code he couldn't quite place. He was used to people trembling in his presence either because of his reputation at MKU or the darker, whispered rumors of his life outside these glass walls as a powerful figure in the city's underworld.
"I don't pay you to analyze the hardware of the building," he snapped, his eyes narrowing. "I pay you to be invisible and efficient. Go back to your station before I decide your 'brilliance' is an overhead cost I can do without."
Lisa didn't flinch. She met his icy stare with a polite, professional smile. "Efficiency is my specialty, Mr. Sheng Xi. I'll be at my desk if you find the diagnostics... unsatisfactory."
As she turned to leave, Michael found himself watching her. It was a rare flicker of curiosity in a heart he had long ago decided was closed for business.