The meeting ran twenty minutes over.
Neva didn't check her phone during it — she didn't check her phone during any meeting, a rule she'd established in the first week of EMBER's operation and maintained without exception. When the client finally left at 6:42 p.m. she thanked them at the door, closed it, stood in the quiet of the empty conference room for thirty seconds, then picked up her jacket and her bag and left.
The evening was warm. She walked the six blocks to the apartment instead of calling a cab. This was one of the small decisions she made when she had been inside for too long and needed the city to reset something — the particular quality of outdoor air and movement that returned her to herself more efficiently than anything else she'd found.
She thought about the client mee
