Chapter 17

The only light in the war room was the bruised glow of the tactical screens, plus the migraine flicker of six mismatched desk lamps fighting over turf. Every surface had been repurposed for a kind of organized chaos: grid maps stacked under coffee-stained pizza boxes, drone batteries charging on what used to be a coat rack, a scatter of empty mugs forming a perimeter around the central table. Someone had spray-painted “NO BAD IDEAS” above the whiteboard. No one had erased it.

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