They submitted the panel presentation at 11:47 p.m., four minutes from the automated portal closing, and Zarina sat back in her chair in his office with the specific, light-headed relief of a deadline finally, actually met.
"We made it," she said, half laughing, the exhaustion of the last three days catching up to her all at once now that there was nothing left to fix. "I genuinely thought we wouldn't. The financing appendix alone—"
"Took four hours we didn't have. I know." He was smiling — really smiling, the kind she'd catalogued exactly once before, months ago, across a different desk, and had assumed for a long time she'd never see aimed at her again. "You did excellent work tonight. All of it. The whole submission is the strongest thing I've reviewed this cycle, and I'm not saying t
