The challenge didn’t arrive through the standard legal channels. There was no process server at the basement door, no courtesy call from compliance, and no notification on the digital court registry. It landed as a cold, unprompted attachment in Rafe’s administrative inbox—a three-page PDF bearing the grey digital seal of the Federal Procurement Office, stamped across the upper margin like a smear of ash.
Rafe was already pacing narrow circles by the particleboard desk when Elias kicked the lower hatch open and stumbled into the subterranean field office at 6:45 AM. The room felt suffocatingly tight, thick with the sour stench of old coffee, damp wool, and the scorched copper smell leaching from the secondary electrical panel.
On the center sawhorses, Rafe’s backup laptop screen was spli
