Friday arrived with the particular tension of a day everyone involved had been quietly dreading and looking forward to in equal measure. By six o'clock, the group thread had gone almost entirely silent — the calm before what Gavin had, unhelpfully, taken to calling "H-hour," a term Viktor had immediately banned him from using out loud in the building.
Elena had spent most of the afternoon unable to focus on anything else, checking her phone under her desk between meetings like a teenager waiting for a text back. She'd told herself, more than once, that it was ridiculous to be this invested in the logistics of moving one dog three floors down and out a service elevator. It didn't stop her from checking again five minutes later.
Viktor positioned himself in the security office, monitors ar
