The courtroom smelled like old wood and recycled air.
Mia arrived at 8:15 with Patricia and sat at the plaintiff's table while the room filled around her. She wore the navy blazer she had bought two weeks ago — not for court specifically, but because she had been wearing borrowed clothes and break-room uniforms for two months and there was something about walking into the most important room of her life in something that actually fit that felt necessary. Sarah had ironed it. She had not told Sarah to iron it. Sarah had done it anyway.
The gallery was fuller than it had been for the preliminary hearing. Journalists. Tech industry faces she recognized from photos she had studied in case it mattered. Two people she identified as EchoTech employees, sitting together in the third row with the
