Chapter 6: Synaptic Weather

The briefing was scheduled for nine o'clock Thursday morning, a routine case-status review in a medium-sized conference room on Southwark Precinct's third floor that smelled of recycled air and someone's abandoned coffee. I had slept four hours. The feed entry I had written in the dark had taken longer than I intended, and after I had closed it I had lain in the narrow rented bed listening to the midnight drone corridor cycle through its intervals — a low oscillating hum that the letting agency's documentation, with remarkable confidence, described as negligible.

I arrived three minutes early, which in the context of what followed I note only because it seems important to establish that I was present and oriented when the briefing began. I was not tired in a way that should have mattered. I have functioned on less sleep in conditions that made this conference room look like a spa.

Holmes was already seated at the far end of the table, a physical notepad open in front of her, a cup of something that was emphatically not coffee at her elbow. She did not look up when I came in. She was reading with the focused stillness of someone who had been there long enough that the room had adjusted to her presence.