The pandemonium on stage felt both immediate and a million miles away. As security and police swarmed the podium, a calm, authoritative woman with an FDA badge gently touched my arm. “Dr. Hollis? We need your full statement. If you’ll come with me.”
I nodded, feeling a strange and profound quiet descend upon me. The noise of the auditorium—the shouting reporters, Chloe’s continued hysterics, the frantic whispers of disgraced investors—faded into a dull roar, like the sound of a distant ocean. I was the eye of the storm I had created, and in its center, there was only stillness.
They led me not to a police station, but to a hastily commandeered conference room in the hotel’s business wing. The air was sterile, chilled by aggressive air conditioning. It smelled of coffee and bureaucracy. F
