The car ride to Central Tower that morning came with two unfamiliar faces up front instead of Charlotte's — temporary security, competent-looking men with earpieces and no history with her at all, the kind of substitution that made the absence of her actual team feel sharper rather than less noticeable.
Hannah barely registered them. She was still running through the day's schedule when the car pulled into the underground garage, and she was still running through it when she stepped out and found King already standing by the elevator bank. A young female executive from the legal department was lingering nearby, blatantly staring at him while pretending to check her phone. King, arms crossed in his standard black turtleneck and dark pants, was utterly ignoring her, looking like he'd been holding that position for hours.
She stopped.
"When did you get discharged?"
"I didn't." He said it without any particular concern, like it was a minor scheduling detail rather than a hospital's actual authority being ignored. "I left."
"You left."
A small, dry shrug. "I don't do well with hospitals. Never have."
"You should be resting."
"I'm fully healed." He said it flatly, in a tone that dared her to argue with a body she had no actual way of verifying. "If either of us shouldn't be here this morning, it's you."
"I have a company to run."
"And I have a job to do." He fell into step beside her as she started toward the elevator, unbothered, leaving the staring executive behind like the conversation was already settled in his favor. "Funny how that works out."
---
The ride up was short and mostly silent, the temporary security flanking them without a word, already peeling toward the lobby checkpoints the moment the doors opened. King stayed at her side as she crossed the floor toward her office, and neither of them said much of anything worth repeating until the door had closed behind them and the corridor outside was somebody else's job to watch.
Hannah dropped her bag onto the chair by the window and looked at him properly for the first time since the garage.
"How's everyone actually doing?"
"Charlotte is stable. The doctors are discharging her by the end of the day, though keeping her in that bed until then might require actual restraints," ,Kira checked himself out sometime before dawn and hasn't surfaced since, which with him could mean anything from fine to filing paperwork somewhere I can't see." He paused. "Miguel discharged himself about an hour before I did. As for kit i have no clue".Lucius said. "Toby on the other hand is relatively fine, just banged up. But Liam..." He paused, his expression remaining neutral. "He's still out of it. They can't give a definitive prognosis yet. He took a lot of damage."
Hannah's jaw tightened a fraction, her gaze dropping to the desk for a second before she forced it back up.
"We have the Expo in less than a week," Hannah said, sitting on the edge of her desk instead of behind it. "I can't afford to lose the runway on this. Not with half the security department out."
"Then don't."
She looked at him for a moment.
"About the other night—"
---
The door swung open without a knock, Jules already talking before she'd fully cleared the frame, the metallic click of her prosthetic marking each step behind her.
"There she is. You look like hell, you know that?"
Whatever Hannah had been about to say folded itself back down, unfinished, set aside for a version of this conversation that apparently wasn't happening today.
"I mean it affectionately," Jules added, dropping into the chair across from the desk without asking. She glanced once at King with the easy familiarity of someone who'd stopped being surprised by his presence a while ago.
Hannah looked down at her immaculate, perfectly pressed suit, the Gipson mask faltering just enough to let a dry sigh escape into the room.
"Thank you," Hannah said flatly. "I think."
"I'm here about the Expo fittings, by the way, not just to insult you," Jules continued, pivoting seamlessly. "Vanguard Couture's got three new pieces that need your sign-off before Sentinel Forge gets their hands on the press photos."
"Already?"
"It's in six days, Hannah. You know how this works — everyone wants their name on the invite before anyone's actually built anything." Jules studied her with the particular scrutiny of someone checking for damage that wouldn't show up on a chart. "You know back in my hero days I got buried under a building once and couldn't get back into it for months. You get thrown through whatever last night actually was, and you're standing here signing off on fabric swatches the next morning. I don't know if that's admirable or if it means we need to have a longer conversation."
"Probably both."
"Probably both," Jules agreed, and for a second the corporate weight of the room lifted, just slightly, under the kind of warmth that didn't need to be performed to land.
---
She didn't stay long — a working city didn't leave much room for extended check-ins, even genuine ones.
Enoch arrived some time later, tablet in one hand, two coffees balanced in the other, dropping into the room with the particular ease of someone who never needed an invitation.
"I come bearing bribes, and your actual schedule, in that order of importance." He set one cup in front of Hannah before turning to King, holding the second one out like an offering. "And for you — let me guess. Black. No sugar. You look like a black, no sugar kind of man."
"On the contrary," Lucius said. "I like mine with a lot of sugar and a truly unreasonable amount of milk."
Enoch blinked. "That's not coffee. That's dessert with a caffeine problem."
"It's coffee with priorities."
"It's diabetes in a cup."
"Everyone's a critic." Lucius accepted the cup this time, if only to make a point, and didn't drink from it.
Enoch laughed, easy and genuine-sounding, before turning back to Hannah. His smile faded into a look of deep, brotherly concern.
"How are you actually doing? Not the version you're giving the board this afternoon."
"I'm holding up," Hannah said, her posture perfectly straight, the Gipson mask sliding effortlessly into place. "It's been a long forty-eight hours, but we're managing."
"You don't have to manage everything alone," Enoch said softly. He stepped closer, placing his tablet on the desk. "Let me take the board briefing this afternoon. You've been through a war zone, Hannah. Let me shoulder the suits for a day so you can actually catch your breath."
"I appreciate it, Enoch," Hannah said, her tone softening just a fraction. "But I need to be in that room. If I don't show my face, they'll smell blood in the water."
"I know," Enoch sighed, running a hand through his hair. He looked at her with an entirely unguarded openness. "I just... I didn't know where you were for almost forty minutes last night. I was terrified. I want you to know that isn't a complaint. I just needed you to know it."
Near the door, Lucius stood perfectly still, the coffee untouched in his hand. He wasn't listening to the words. He was listening to the biology underneath them.
Enoch's heart was beating at a slow, resting sixty-two beats per minute. His breathing was even. His palms were bone dry.
Lucius set the observation aside without drawing a conclusion from it, and went back to watching the door.
"The Expo's confirmed for next week," Enoch said, easily pivoting back to business once the quiet moment had run its course. "Sentinel Forge is underwriting the whole thing this year — new gear showcase, hero sponsorships, the usual circus. Attendance is mandatory at your level."
"Is Sol coming?"
"Campaign won't let him. Apparently a candidate skipping a rally for an industry expo days before an election reads badly no matter how you spin it." Enoch's mouth twisted into something almost sympathetic. "His team sends regrets. Loudly, and in triplicate."
"One more thing to survive," Hannah said, picking up a folder.
"One more thing." Enoch was already rising, already reaching for whatever lived next on the list in his head. "I'll have the rest of the brief to you by Friday."
He left the way he always left — quietly, efficiently, the door easing shut behind him without so much as a click.
---
Hannah's actual Expo planning meeting started twenty minutes later, three floors down, in a glass-walled room already crowded with fabric swatches and raised voices before she'd even opened the door.
Lucius didn't follow her in. He took up position against the wall beside the entrance instead, the exact spot that gave him a sightline down both ends of the corridor, and settled in for what experience told him would be a long meeting.
He'd been there less than five minutes when Valentina found him.
She came around the corner already talking, a bolt of dove-grey fabric draped over one arm like a scarf that had gotten ambitious, her red-framed glasses pushed up into her hair.
"There he is." She stopped in front of him, tilting her head, evaluating his tall, athletic build the exact way she evaluated a length of silk before deciding whether it deserved to exist. "You know what you are right now? A commodity."
"I'm standing in a hallway."
"You are the most interesting silhouette in this city, and you are entirely wasting it." She unfurled the fabric with a snap, holding it up against his shoulder before he could step back. "Do you have any idea what is circulating right now? High-definition chopper feeds. Multiple angles. A mystery man blowing a dragon out of the sky with a hand cannon, then sitting on its snout like it was a park bench."
"I'm sure the news cycle will find something else tomorrow."
"Don't play coy with me, darling. You are trending higher than half the ranked heroes. Every woman in my department—hell, half the women in this building—has been looping the feed since three A.M. They are currently trying to figure out if you're single, and the other half are debating if they even care."
"I'd love to help." Lucius didn't move the fabric off his shoulder, just let it sit there. "Unfortunately, I have a strict personal policy against being a public spectacle."
Valentina stared at him. "You are, by definition, the biggest spectacle in New Kong right now."
"I'm aware. It's a very selectively enforced policy."
"That is not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting."
She studied him a moment longer, searching for the crack she was used to finding in people who said no to her the first time. She didn't find one.
"Che disastro," she muttered, rolling the fabric back over her arm with a dramatic sigh clearly calibrated to be heard. "Fine. Waste your face. Hide those cheekbones. See if I offer twice."
She swept off down the corridor, presumably toward the same meeting Hannah was already twenty minutes deep into.
Lucius went back to watching the door, the coffee finally, quietly, going cold in his hand.
---
TO BE CONTINUED