Day three began before either of them had properly slept and stretched itself into a night that refused to end. By the time the office clock crossed 11:30 p.m., the war room had stopped feeling like a workplace and started feeling like something far more suffocating—an enclosed space where time blurred and pressure settled into the air like something tangible. Screens continued to glow with relentless updates, headlines shifting tone from speculation to accusation, each one sharper than the last.
Joanna hadn’t sat in over two hours, but she didn’t notice it anymore. Her focus was absolute, almost mechanical, as her fingers moved quickly across the keyboard, scanning, editing, rejecting, rewriting. Hunger didn’t register, exhaustion didn’t matter, and the faint ache building at the back of her head was something she chose not to acknowledge. Control, for her, had never been about ease. It was about endurance.
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