The task force room never really sleeps.
It just cycles through different kinds of exhaustion.
By the third night, the air smells like burnt coffee and stale adrenaline, the kind that clings to the back of your throat long after the caffeine stops working. Someone has left a half-eaten protein bar on the edge of a desk. A jacket is draped over the back of a chair like it gave up halfway through the shift. Screens line the walls, some paused on satellite maps, others flickering through data streams that never quite resolve into certainty. Names scroll. Dates. Locations. Connections that knot together and then pull apart again when someone notices a flaw and calls it out quietly.
Damian stands at the central table, jacket discarded, sleeves rolled to his forearms. The veins along his hand
