Don didn't leave his room after that.
The warmth of Samantha's touch lingered only for a few seconds. Then it was gone. Replaced by charts. Scans. Projections.
The walls of his mind weren't just guarded—they were fortified. And tonight, they needed to be. If he was going to survive this game with Charles and come out with more than scraps of reputation, he had to stay ahead of the curve.
Emotion had its place. Just not now.
He spent the next few hours dissecting the plan.
Breaking down contingencies. Running through counter-narratives. Identifying blind spots before they got him killed.
And when that well ran dry—he turned inward.
Don lay flat on his bed, eyes closed, the faint glow of his augmented contact lenses shimmering beneath his lids. The simulation began like all the others—structured chaos, force multipliers, fluid threat assessment.
But eventually, it unraveled.
It always did.
