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Summary: It's Monday. And because the Universe has quite the sense of humour, you are forced into positions you are NOT prepared for! A.K.A. Competency at work is awarded with MORE WORK!!

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CHAPTER 7

Monday… the start of another work week.

The day arrives with the tactlessness of a fire alarm as your phone vibrates beneath your pillow at exactly the wrong point in a dream you cannot remember. It leaves behind only fragments: blue light, café warmth, a bus pulling away, a tall man beneath a streetlamp, a voice asking if you are home.

You open your eyes and stare at the ceiling.

For three seconds, you allow yourself the luxury of forgetting.

Then the weekend returns.

Shieldwall. Alexis. His bright blond hair, his easy laugh, his hand warm around yours, his arm going subtly tense beneath your fingers. The bus. The cold little emptiness afterward.

And then…Dorn appearing out of the city night as if someone had cut him from another piece of reality and placed him beneath the same streetlamp.

‘Sir?’

Soup. Tea. His voice in the café, low and careful, telling you embarrassment is human. His almost-smile when you accused him of soup-based emotional crisis management. The word ‘Rogal’ leaving his mouth like a line crossed before either of you had fully seen it. His arms around you at the station, slow and careful, a restrained shelter that somehow makes the memory of Alexis’ hug feel even stranger.

And then Stoneheart, later.

‘Home?’

You press the heel of your palm to one eye and groan into the morning.

“No,” you tell the ceiling. “Absolutely not. We are not thinking before coffee.”

You roll out of bed with the grace of a badly unfolding camping chair and shuffle toward the bathroom. The mirror gives you back a woman who has technically slept and emotionally been chased through a hedge maze by the interaction with two different men, both of whom appear so diametrically opposite to each other and yet somehow feel eerily similar… like sister fonts! Like Garamond and Georgia.

You chuckle as you think of Alexis being Georgia. That man is clearly Pacifico in a sentient body.

“So stupid,” you mutter at your reflection. “You’re comparing men to fonts now. On theme, my dear!”

The shower helps clear your mind a little, the hot water loosens the stiffness in your shoulders and sends steam crawling up the glass. You stand under it longer than necessary while your mind sorts the images into piles.

Work pile: Dorn belongs there with his crisp shirts, exacting comments, and his redlines that look like battlefield casualties. The Wall.

Then, another image slips into the wrong stack: Dorn across from you in a small warm café, gaze lowered so he does not look at you too hard while you try not to cry over a man he does not know.

Except he knows enough now. You told him the outline of the wound, about how reality did not match the person you had built in your head. How you missed someone who was still there.

Stoneheart pile: that should be safer. A username, a voice through headphones, dry humor, Paladin’s orders to drink water and take long rests. The steady weight of his typed concern at the end of a day.

Now Alexis’ face keeps entering that room uninvited. Tall, golden, warm. Lovely. Wrong.

By the time you dress, you have chosen the safest office version of yourself: dark trousers, a soft blouse, cardigan, hair clipped back with enough force to suggest discipline. Small earrings. Concealer applied with the reverence of a restorer repairing a damaged fresco.

Your phone sits on the desk beside your bag, dark and far too conspicuous; you have not opened the chat since last night.

Well… that is a lie. You opened it twice after climbing into bed, read the last messages, typed nothing, then closed it again like someone shutting a cupboard on a ghost.

Stoneheart’s final message still waits in memory.

Tomorrow, then.

I’ll be here.

At the time, it had made something in you loosen, just enough for sleep to find you. This morning, the tenderness of it sits uneasily beneath your ribs. He is still there, and that is the problem! He hasn’t done anything overtly terrible enough to justify your retreat. He is still himself in all the ways that matter through a screen.

“We are going to work,” you announce to the apartment. “We are going to be normal.”

The plant in the corner drops one exhausted leaf.

You point at it. “Don’t you start.”

Outside, the city is already in motion. Morning light lies pale across the pavement, too bright for your amount of unresolved emotional admin. Commuters move with Monday faces on, clipped steps and sealed mouths, clutching coffee cups like ritual objects. The air smells faintly of rain, damp concrete, and bakery exhaust from the shop near the station.

At the platform, the train arrives with that familiar shriek that announces the start of yet another work week. You board, find a place near the door, and hold the pole while the carriage rocks into motion. The window catches your reflection whenever the train dives into the tunnel: face composed, eyes too alert, mouth set in a line that suggests a woman carefully negotiating with herself.

Then, as if on cue, your phone buzzes once in your bag.

You ignore it for exactly eight seconds. Then you pull it out.

Stoneheart007 - 7:42 AM Morning. Did daylight improve the situation, or is the situation still under review?

You stare at the message.

It is so him. Dry. Careful. Offering conversation while pretending to offer a procedural status check.

A tiny smile threatens the corner of your mouth before you can stop it.

That irritates you. Affection is deeply inconvenient when one is trying to be dignified in withdrawal.

You type:

Troublemaker2301 - 7:44 AM Still under review. Committee is tired and has requested coffee.

You hover over the screen, then add nothing else; no raccoon joke, no heart update, no little string of emojis meant to soften the restraint.

Once you click ‘Send’, the reply comes after a minute.

Stoneheart007 - 7:45 AM Reasonable. Do not let the committee make major rulings before breakfast.

Your smile happens despite you.

Then the train pulls into your stop, and the doors open with a sigh.

You tuck the phone away before your traitorous thumbs can respond warmly.

Phalanx Structural Design, the firm rises from its block like a verdict. The building has always looked severe from the outside, a clean grid of glass and stone with the company name fixed above the entrance in brushed steel letters. Today, it looks almost theatrical, as if it knows you spent the weekend accidentally humanising the man who controls half its internal weather.

The lobby smells of floor polish, coffee from the staff kiosk, and expensive air conditioning. Security nods you through. Your ID card taps against your chest as you step into the elevator with three other employees, all of whom look spiritually unprepared for Monday.

The ride up is silent except for the soft whirr of machinery.

You watch the numbers climb with an inexplicable anxiety typical of Mondays the world over.

By the time the doors open on the drafting floor, your face is as passably neutral as ever. The office beyond greets you in its usual language: fluorescent brightness, muted conversations, keyboards tapping in nervous bursts, the distant cough and whine of the plotter warming up for war. Rows of desks hold their careful chaos, mugs, printouts, cables, marked plans, desk plants, figurines, snack wrappers hidden behind monitors.

You reach your desk and find three sticky notes waiting on your monitor.

‘CHECK ROOF DRAINAGE DETAIL’

ASK ME ABOUT REVISION CLOUDS, with a tiny thundercloud drawn beside it.

MEETING 10:30? BIG ONE? from Rena two desks down, who has underlined BIG twice and drawn eyes beside it.

“Big one?” you mutter, and as if on cue, Rena’s chair swivels with the speed of gossip powered by caffeine. She is already holding a mug with both hands, hair twisted up in a pencil-assisted bun, eyeliner sharp enough to draft with.

“You didn’t see the email?”

“What email?”

Her eyes widen with theatrical pity. “Oh, honey. Never begin Monday with that sentence.”

You drop into your chair and wake your monitor. Your inbox loads with the sluggish menace of a beast digesting the corpses of the vanquished brave. And then, sure enough, there it is, near the top.

From: Rogal Dorn Subject: Department Coordination Meeting, 10:30 AM Location: Main Conference Room Attendance required. All drafting leads, senior coordinators, and relevant junior staff are to attend a coordination meeting at 10:30 regarding upcoming municipal work and resource allocation. Bring current workload summaries. R. Dorn

A sensible person would see this and think, meeting. You see it and think, public buildings, scrutiny, budget pressure, late nights, and the particular expression Dorn gets when someone uses “approximately” where a number belongs.

Rena leans closer. “Do you know what it is?”

“No.”

“Rumour says the firm landed something big from the city.”

“Rumour says a lot of things.”

“True. Last month rumour said the archive team had a ghost.”

“The archive team does have a ghost. It’s called outdated filing practice.”

Rena snorts into her coffee. “Oh, you’re alive after all. You looked like a Victorian widow when you came in.”

“I had a long weekend.”

“Fun long or spiritually educational long?”

“The kind that should have come with a diagram.” You sigh, suddenly tired.

“Ominous.”

“Very.”

She opens her mouth, clearly ready to pry, but a shift in the room stops her.

It is subtle the way the office adjusts to the change; conversations lower by half a register, backs straighten, and someone near the printer stops laughing mid-syllable.

For Rogal Dorn has entered the drafting floor.

He comes through the glass doors from the executive corridor with a folder tucked under one arm and a takeaway coffee in the other hand. His coat is gone, suit jacket immaculate, pale hair brushed back, shirt collar perfectly aligned. The weekend has been erased from him with almost insulting efficiency. He is once again Director Dorn, the Wall, the man whose presence makes interns remember they have spines only because he is inspecting whether they are properly installed.

And yet…

Amber light on the severe line of his cheek. His coat folded before he sat. Napkins set beside your hand. The brief warmth of his full smile. The careful pressure of his hand between your shoulder blades at the station.

He is walking down the central aisle, speaking briefly to a senior engineer, glancing at a marked printout someone hands him, making a note with his pen directly on the page. Efficient. Remote. Untouchable.

Then his gaze lifts. It finds you.

The contact lasts perhaps one second.

To you, the office narrows around the moment.

Of course, he looks the same. And he does not. Because now, you know the exact shade of his eyes in warm café light. You know that when he is unsure how to comfort someone, he says so. You know he can be funny on purpose, though he would risk perjury in court denying that. You know that when he holds someone, he does it as if the act has weight.

Then, just as quickly as it landed on you, his gaze moves on.

Rena’s voice comes from beside you, much too interested. “Did he just look at you?”

“He looks at everyone, Rena. It’s how he maintains office discipline and seasonal dread.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Do not ‘mm-hmm’ me before nine.”

Across the floor, Dorn continues toward his office.

He wants to.

He entered the building with an exact plan for the day. Review municipal briefing. Confirm resource map. Speak with Roboute before finance sign-off. Announce the internal team. Begin structural coordination. Maintain boundaries. Avoid unnecessary contact. Avoid looking at you in a way that someone with eyes and a functioning sense of human behaviour might interpret correctly.

He saw you at your desk in the greenish glow of your monitor, cardigan soft at your shoulders, hair clipped back. Composed at first glance. Tired at the second. Mouth held too carefully, posture guarded, as if you have placed several emotional objects on high shelves and do not intend to discuss them.

His phone sits in his pocket, heavier than it should be. He knows the latest exchange by heart already. Still under review. Committee is tired and has requested coffee. Even in distance, you cannot help being yourself. And he has no right to take comfort from that.

He reaches his office, steps inside, and closes the door.

The glass wall gives him a view of the drafting floor. It also gives the drafting floor a view of him, so he does not stand there looking at your desk. Instead, he places the folder on his blotter, aligns it with the edge, sets his coffee beside the lamp, and removes his notebook from the top drawer.

The first page for the day contains the list he wrote before leaving for home on Friday.

Municipal project launch… Staffing structure… Conflict review… Direct report issue unresolved… Do not overcorrect……. Do not avoid necessary professional development because of personal discomfort.

He knows what must happen today.

You are the right person for the assignment. And that makes this so much more difficult! For if you were unsuitable, he could remove the problem cleanly. If another employee were better positioned, he could reassign the task and call it prudence. If his judgment were obviously compromised, he could walk into Roboute’s office and restructure with a clear operational reason.

You are not the most senior drafter. You are not the loudest. You do not push yourself forward when credit is being distributed. You worry too much, second guess, overwork, apologize when you should ask, and assume competence in others before you grant it to yourself.

But you also notice things… Small things. Inconsistencies. Misalignments. The way a section line cuts through an assumption nobody has questioned. The way a dimension fails to match the elevation by just enough to matter. When frightened by failure, you return to the task at hand more carefully. You do not make the same mistake twice unless the system itself pushes you into it.

The Bastion Civic Centre requires exactly that kind of eye.

His phone vibrates. It is Roboute.

Roboute Guilliman - 8:31 Confirming 10:30 attendance. Finance package is complete. I’ll take the first twenty minutes to cover municipal oversight, conflict requirements, and public reporting obligations.

Dorn exhales through his nose.

R.D. - 8:32 Confirmed. I’ll handle staffing.

Roboute Guilliman - 8:33 Good. Also, sleep at some point this week. That is a management instruction, not a wellness suggestion.

Dorn looks at the message for a long moment. Then, he locks the phone without replying.

Across the floor, your morning begins to accumulate weight.

A revised lintel detail needs checking. Someone has mislabelled gridlines on a shared background file. The roof drainage note turns out to be attached to a section from two revisions ago, which inspires several uncharitable thoughts about document version control. Email threads multiply. You open your workload summary and try to make it look like a document prepared by a calm professional rather than a hostage note assembled under pressure.

You try not to think about Dorn being in the room. Impossible, because Dorn is frequently in rooms. He is one of the great room-altering forces of modern civilisation. You cannot blame yourself for noticing.

Work-Dorn, you understand. Stand straight. Answer clearly. Do not say “about” when you mean a number. Do not hand him anything you have not checked twice. Accept that he was forged in some ancient workshop where mercy was optional and chair alignment was law.

“Nope,” you whisper. “Absolutely not.”

Rena’s voice floats over from two desks down. “Are you praying?”

“More like filing a complaint with the gods.”

“About?” she quips, interested.

“Men.” You deadpan.

“Valid. Want me to co-sign?”

“Always.”

At 9:12, Stoneheart messages again.

Stoneheart007 - 9:12 AM How severe is Monday?

For a moment you want to click it. You want to tell him about the big meeting, about how the office feels as though it has inhaled and is waiting to speak. You want to say your boss looked at you once and your brain dropped a stack of files. You want to say you are angry with Stoneheart for being kind, sorry for being angry, and still unsure what to do with Alexis’ face attached to the steadiness you thought you knew.

You open your phone under the desk like a teenager hiding contraband.

Troublemaker2301 - 9:15 AM Standard Monday severity. Coffee recommended. Possible casualties by lunch.

You pause. Then, because distance feels cruel and warmth feels dangerous, you add the smallest offering.

Troublemaker2301 - 9:15 AM You?

His reply comes quickly.

Stoneheart007 - 9:16 AM High variable load. No casualties yet.

That makes you smile before you can stop yourself.

Damn him!!

Troublemaker2301 - 9:17 AM Tragic. I was hoping for drama.

Stoneheart007 - 9:17 AM You are drama enough for one server.

The laugh that escapes you is tiny, but real.

Inside his office, Dorn reads your last message and allows himself exactly one breath of relief.

You answered…

A foolish man would build hope from that. A responsible man would record it as data and proceed cautiously.

He sets the phone down and picks up the municipal folder.

The first page bears the city seal and the working title in clean official type.

BASTION CIVIC CENTRE Public Library, Community Hall, Municipal Archive, and Emergency Resilience Shelter Phase One Structural Coordination and Drafting Integration

Bastion: a building meant to shelter people in flood, heatwave, power outage. A place where children will read after school. A place elderly residents will come for city services. A hall where citizens will argue, celebrate, wait out storms. A building that must endure, not merely impress.

He turns the page.

Project deliverables. Schematic integration. Structural grid coordination. Public accessibility compliance. Fire egress. Archive load requirements. Mechanical plant zones. Flood resilience systems. Community-use flexibility.

At 10:15, the office gathers toward the meeting point.

People print summaries. Someone swears softly at the stapler. Rena appears at your desk with two mints and the look of a soldier passing ammunition in a trench.

“For courage,” she says.

“Is it that bad?”

“No idea. That’s why courage.”

You take one. “Thank you.”

She lowers her voice. “Your workload summary?”

“Mostly honest.”

“That means terrifying?”

“That means legally defensible.” You grin, feeling some of the anxiety leave your system as the mint blooms in your tongue.

“Excellent. Very Phalanx.”

You stand, smoothing your cardigan. Your stomach does something unhelpful. The mint continues to sit sharp on your tongue.

Across the floor, Dorn emerges from his office with the municipal folder in hand. The movement of the room changes at once. Chairs push back. Conversations taper. People gather tablets, notebooks, coffee cups. The main conference room waits with its long table, glass walls, wall-mounted screen, and the faint institutional smell of dry-erase markers and ambition.

For one moment, as you approach the doorway, Dorn stands just inside, speaking quietly with Roboute Guilliman.

You have seen Guilliman before, of course. Everyone has. Director of HR and Finance, calm as an ocean seen from orbit, tall and composed, with a face that suggests he knows where every budget line has been buried. He holds a tablet in one hand and listens to Dorn with the grave attention of a man who can turn policy into weather.

Guilliman’s gaze shifts toward the entering staff. It passes over you without lingering, though you get the distinct impression of being noticed anyway. Then he replies to Dorn, equally quiet.

You slip inside and take a seat halfway down the table, close enough to see the screen, far enough from the head of the table that your nervous system does not immediately perish.

Rena sits beside you. She opens her notebook and writes:

BIG MYSTERY MEETING????

She writes beneath it: If I die, clear my browser history.

You bite the inside of your cheek to avoid laughing.

But then, Dorn moves to the head of the table.

He does not need to call for silence. He simply stands there until silence becomes the only reasonable architectural outcome.

Your gaze drops to the folder in his hand.

The municipal seal gleams on the cover and underneath it is typed in bold letters:

Bastion Civic Centre.

Dorn places the folder on the table. His hands rest on either side of it, broad, steady, exact.

“Good morning,” he says, and the whole room sharpens with attention.

“We have received formal confirmation from the city,” he says, “that Phalanx Structural Design has been awarded phase one structural coordination and drafting integration for the Bastion Civic Centre.”

A ripple moves through the room.

A few people sit straighter. Someone near the end exhales softly. Rena’s pen freezes over the word MYSTERY.

Public building, your mind supplies, immediate and cold. Public use. Public safety. Public scrutiny.

“This will be a demanding project,” Dorn says, drawing you out of your thoughts.

“It is also exactly the sort of project this firm exists to deliver. It must be durable, accessible, adaptable, and exact. It will be used by people who will never know our names and who will trust the work regardless.”

A building, people will trust.

Guilliman steps forward, tablet in hand, his tone smoother than Dorn’s, though no less commanding.

He speaks of municipal oversight, public accountability, reporting requirements, ethics, documentation discipline, conflict procedures, budget transparency. The words should be dull. And yet, when he says them, they are not. They sketch the project as something larger than drawings and deadlines. This is not a private client’s vanity tower. This is a civic promise made in concrete, steel, glass, and compliance forms.

Dorn watches the room while Guilliman speaks. He watches who leans forward at complexity and who leans back from it. He watches who is calculating hours, who is thinking about reputation, who is thinking about the public good. His gaze passes you once and finds your hands folded tightly around your pen.

You’re afraid, he thinks. Good. Fear, properly understood, is respect for consequence. The trick will be teaching you the rest.

Guilliman finishes with a final reminder that all project communications are auditable and that public-sector work requires standards of transparency beyond ordinary private contracts. He says this in a calm voice that makes several people immediately rethink every casual email they have ever sent.

“Thank you, Roboute.”

Dorn opens the folder.

“We will review workstreams first,” he says. “Then assignments.”

Beside you, Rena writes in her notebook:

‘Oh no’

The morning, which began with a ceiling, a plant, and a promise to be normal, narrows to the sound of paper turning beneath his hand.

And at the head of the table, Rogal Dorn begins, and he begins with the scope.

No dramatic preamble. No inspirational little speech about civic duty wrapped in corporate softness. No PowerPoint slide with smiling stock-photo citizens standing beneath fake sunlight in a suspiciously clean public atrium.

He turns one page in the municipal folder, looks over the assembled staff with those sharp, assessing eyes, and says, “The Bastion Civic Centre is not one building in function. It is five structures wearing one envelope.”

The wall-mounted screen wakes from corporate-blue idleness into a site plan marked with municipal boundaries, setbacks, flood-risk overlays, and the early footprint of the proposed centre. You have seen hundreds of preliminary plans. Usually, they are abstractions at this stage: lines and shaded boxes, labelled zones, aspirational geometry. This one already feels heavier.

Public Library.

Community Hall.

Municipal Archive.

Emergency Resilience Shelter.

Administrative Services.

Shared Public Plaza.

The labels sit on the plan like obligations.

“The library and archive wings have different structural demands,” Dorn says. “The community hall requires clear-span flexibility. The shelter must function independently during service interruptions for up to seventy-two hours. Administrative services must remain publicly accessible without compromising secure zones. Flood resilience is of fundamental priority, since the site is on along the river bank.”

You sit very still, workload summary open before you and already useless. You had written active tasks, pending deadlines, capacity estimates. Neat rows. Sensible boxes. Now, it looks inconsequential in front of what you would most likely be a miniscule part of.

Dorn turns toward the screen as the next slide appears: a section sketch through the main public atrium. It is early, diagrammatic, stripped of polish. Even so, there is ambition in it. A broad central volume with terraces stepping upward, public reading decks, suspended walkways, a tall, glazed wall facing the plaza, roof trusses drawn as clean black strokes above a forest of preliminary columns.

Instead, all you can think about is how people will stand there, how children will run across that floor. Someone’s grandmother will wait beneath that roof during a heatwave. City employees will trust the egress routes. Books and archives will sit on shelves whose loads need to be calculated without romance. In a storm, when lights fail elsewhere and roads flood and phones blink low battery warnings, people may come to this building because some official pamphlet promised them it would hold.

It must hold.

“The architectural concept has been accepted in principle by the city. Our responsibility in phase one is to coordinate structural grids, primary framing logic, foundation strategy, flood resilience interfaces, archive loading provisions, egress conflicts, and drafting integration across disciplines.”

Dorn clicks again.

A responsibility matrix appears.

You recognise the format at once: workstreams divided by discipline, names listed in preliminary slots. Different strands that will braid together the rope that becomes the final structure.

Senior Structural Lead: Marcus Hale.

Civil Drainage and Flood Interface: Livia Chen.

MEP Coordination: Dev Malhotra.

Fire and Life Safety Liaison: Johanna Weiss.

Accessibility Review: Rena Malis.

Municipal Reporting: Roboute Guilliman’s office, with project admin support.

Workstream Integration Lead: TBA.

You stare at TBA, and it stares back with the blank malice of a trapdoor.

“Marcus,” he says.

Marcus Hale, seated three chairs down from Guilliman, straightens. He is one of the senior engineers everyone knows by surname first, calm, silvering at the temples, with the permanent expression of a man who has once found a structural flaw in a dream and woken up annoyed.

“You will coordinate the primary structural scheme with my office. Initial grid rationalisation by Thursday. Foundation strategy options by next Monday.”

Marcus nods. “Understood.”

“Livia. Flood interface.”

“Already reviewing the survey data,” Livia says, straightening her glasses. “The site drainage report has gaps. I’ll request the city’s supplemental modelling.”

“Do it today. If they delay, escalate to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

The assignments continue.

Dev receives mechanical coordination with the grim resignation of a man being handed a live octopus and told to make it code-compliant. Johanna asks one concise question about staged occupancy. Rena inhales sharply when her name comes up for accessibility review, then nods with a seriousness that makes you abruptly proud of her.

By the time Dorn reaches the final workstream, the room has settled into the rhythm of taking orders from a man who turns uncertainty into tasks. You know that rhythm; everyone here does. It is one reason people tolerate his severity. Dorn never pretends a problem is smaller than it is. By naming each piece with enough precision, he makes the terrible thing seem capable of being approached.

Then he looks down at the matrix.

“Workstream integration,” he says, and your heart leaps for some inexplicable reason.

You take a deep breath to steady yourself and to convince your silly brain that it is simply another workstream. Someone will be assigned. Probably a senior coordinator. Someone who has done three public-sector projects and speaks fluent consultant-ese. Someone who knows how to make architects, structural engineers, MEP consultants, fire code reviewers, city officials, and document controllers all stand in a line and behave like citizens.

Someone else.

“This workstream will control drawing consistency across all disciplines received by our department,” Dorn says. “It will track revisions, coordinate background updates, flag discrepancies between consultant packages, maintain drawing issue schedules, and prepare weekly coordination reports for review.”

“It will also require early detection of conflicts between structural logic, public circulation, accessibility compliance, life safety, and archive loading. Small errors in this package will become expensive if missed, disastrous if left to remain.”

Your heart gives one hard, unpleasant thud.

Small errors… disastrous… A memory opens beneath your ribs before you can stop it.

“If this were an actual construction, people would die.”

His voice from weeks ago, sharp enough to leave a scar.

Your pen presses into the paper until the tip nearly tears through.

Dorn’s gaze moves around the room, once.

Then it lands on you.

No.

No, no, no.

Absolutely not.

This is a clerical error. A hallucination. The result of low blood sugar, emotional confusion, and insufficient coffee. Perhaps your soul has temporarily left your body and is watching from the ceiling, wearing a high-visibility vest and screaming into a clipboard.

Dorn says your name.

“You will lead workstream integration.”

The words strike with such clean force that for a second everything becomes unbearably clear: the grain of the table beneath your fingers, Rena’s pen frozen beside yours, the hum of the airconditioner in the room, the tiny omega shaped lapel pin on Guilliman’s blazer, Dorn standing at the head of the room, folder open, expression unreadable.

Your mouth goes dry.

Several people turn their heads. Some do it politely. Some only with their eyes. One junior drafter near the end looks openly surprised before rearranging his face into something less suicidal. Marcus Hale’s brows lift by half a millimetre. Johanna Weiss looks from you to Dorn as though evaluating whether a hidden argument occurred before the meeting.

Rena, beside you, becomes impossibly still.

For a moment, the silence lengthens. Then,

“Yes, sir,” you say.

Dorn nods once, as if there could have been no other response.

“You will report initial drawing structure, revision-control protocol, and consultant-background status by Friday. You will work with Rena on accessibility overlays, Johanna on egress pathways, and Marcus on grid alignment. I will review your first coordination log directly.”

Directly.

Wonderful. Excellent. Splendid. Your bones are chalk now!

“Yes, sir,” you say again.

Dorn’s gaze remains on you for one more second.

He does not soften. You find the same astute sharpness in his gaze that you’re used to. Yet something in his attention changes. It holds you with the same precision as before, but without the old lash of contempt you remember from that first report submission fiasco. There is no challenge in it, now. No public test designed to humiliate you. No faint narrowing of the eyes that says he expects failure and waits only to catalogue the form.

Judgment you can resent. His trust is harder to defend against.

He looks away before you can decode anything further.

“Questions regarding workstream integration will go through her first,” Dorn says to the room. “Escalate unresolved conflicts to me. Do not bypass the coordination chain because you dislike waiting forty minutes for an answer. If an issue is urgent, mark it as ‘urgent’ and justify why. If everything is urgent, nothing is.”

A few people look chastened in advance.

You stare at your notes.

Drafting integration lead…Lead… you…!!

Your hand moves by habit, writing the words down as if they belong to another person and you are merely taking minutes of her execution.

Friday: drawing structure.

Revision protocol.

Consultant backgrounds.

Coordination log.

Report to Dorn.

The last sentence sits there on the page like a weight, a verdict.

“Daily internal stand-up at nine for core workstream leads. Twice-weekly coordination review with my office. Formal city-facing report every Friday by four p.m. No drawing is issued externally without document-control verification. No consultant background is used without date stamp confirmation. If a revision is received informally, it does not exist until logged.”

Guilliman steps forward again, picking up the thread with immaculate timing.

“I’ll add one point,” he says. His voice is smoother than Dorn’s, nearly warm, though firm enough that nobody mistakes him for gentle. “This is a public-sector project. The city’s procurement office will audit process as much as outcome. Keep communication clear. Keep records complete. Do not make promises outside your authority. Do not hide delays in vague language. If you are uncertain, say so early enough that it can be managed.”

“Public trust,” Guilliman continues, “is not built only in the finished structure. It is built in the record of how decisions were made. Assume every email may be read by someone who was not present when you wrote it.”

Rena’s pen resumes motion beside you. She writes: ‘Every email is evidence. Cool cool cool.’

Dorn returns to the screen. The next slide shows the project schedule.

You can feel heartrates rise as a collective around the room.

Milestone dates march across the screen with all the compassion of a firing squad. Several deadlines cluster together so tightly they look like they are plotting murder.

“Phase one is compressed,” Dorn says.

Someone at the far end coughs in a way that sounds suspiciously like a laugh strangled to death.

Dorn looks in that direction, and the cough dies a silent death.

“The schedule is aggressive,” he continues. “It is not impossible. It will require discipline, accuracy, and early escalation. Heroics at the end of a failed process are expensive. Avoid needing them.”

Heroics.

Stoneheart flickers through your mind with painful suddenness.

‘Then I’ll be up too.’

‘If you won’t join the raid, I’ll help you slay this evil project instead.’

Your chest twinges.

That had been heroics, hadn’t it? Kind ones. Sweet ones. Improper ones, though you had not known the full shape of that at the time. He had fixed what you could not fix alone. He had stayed up and carried part of the load, and you had woken at two in the morning with gratitude blooming like a stupid flower in the dark.

Now Dorn is putting you somewhere no invisible paladin can rescue you without crossing every line in the known professional universe.

A stupid thought comes, uninvited and sharp: Stoneheart cannot help you lead a project.

Another follows, quieter: Dorn can.

You hate both thoughts on sight and push them away.

Dorn continues to speak, “Workload adjustments will follow this meeting. Existing assignments will be redistributed where necessary. No one is to pretend they can maintain full existing output while absorbing Bastion responsibilities. I want you fully present. And I can’t have you losing efficiency because you’re overworked.”

The screen changes to meeting cadence.

“Core team remains after this meeting for fifteen minutes,” he says. “Everyone else returns to current deliverables. Updated assignments will be circulated by end of day.”

He names them: Marcus, Livia, Dev, Johanna, Rena, you, and project administration from Guilliman’s office. Each name lands with its own little vibration in the room.

When he says yours again, you feel several sets of eyes return.

Her?

Isn’t she junior for that?

Didn’t Dorn tear apart one of her reports last month?

Maybe she’s better than she looks.

Maybe this is punishment.

Maybe this is favouritism.

Maybe this is a mistake.

The last one lodges because it sounds too much like your own voice. You lower your gaze to the table before anyone can read your face.

Dorn sees the instant your shoulders narrow inward, the way your chin dips by a degree, the way you place your pen down with care, so your fingers have something precise to do. It is a familiar movement now: you make yourself smaller when you think the room is questioning your right to occupy space.

This is the part of the assignment he cannot solve for you.

He can give you authority. He can define the chain of command in front of witnesses. He can make bypassing you inconvenient enough that even the impatient will think twice. He can review your work, correct your errors, and teach where teaching is possible. He cannot walk across the room and place his hand over the private wound where your self-confidence bleeds.

“Authority for workstream coordination is not ceremonial,” he says.

The room stills.

Your head lifts before you can stop it.

Dorn is looking at the group, which makes the words a little easier to bear.

“When she requests revised backgrounds, you provide them. When she flags an inconsistency, you answer it. When she asks for a decision record, you send it. If you disagree with the coordination call, you document the reason and escalate. You do not ignore it.”

It is ridiculous. He is simply clarifying process. A project needs defined authority. A workstream lead needs support. This is professional.

Yet your heart hears something else beneath it: You will not be left to fail because people refused to listen.

Dorn turns a page in the folder. “Questions.”

Livia asks about flood modelling. Dev asks about mechanical plant placement, and Dorn’s answer is so precise that it suggests he has already had a private argument with the preliminary plan and won. Johanna asks whether the shelter designation triggers additional emergency egress requirements under the latest city guidance. Guilliman answers part of that, Dorn answers the rest.

Then Rena raises her pen.

“Accessibility overlays,” she says. “Do we have community consultation notes yet? If the centre is serving as emergency shelter and administrative services, user profiles matter. Mobility, age, sensory needs, language access. The code minimums won’t be enough.”

For the first time in the meeting, Dorn’s expression shifts toward approval in a way almost visible.

“Correct,” he says. “Request the notes through Guilliman’s office. If the city has not provided them, ask why.”

Then Dorn looks at you.

“Workstream integration.”

Your soul leaves the building, files a formal complaint, and returns because your rent is due and depends on you having this job.

“Yes, sir?”

“What do you need first?”

No one has asked you that in a meeting like this. Usually, instructions fall from above and you scramble to implement them, no questions asked. Usually, you discover what you need at midnight while staring at a drawing that hates you. Usually, you are grateful for whatever scraps of context land in your inbox and then apologise for needing clarification.

Dorn however, waits.

You swallow as you reply meekly,

“I need the latest architectural background files with revision dates confirmed,” your voice is quieter than you would like, though steady enough to live. “Not screenshots, not PDFs only. Model files where available and issued drawing sets where models aren’t authorized.”

Dorn nods as he silently urges you to continue. And you do, your voice steadying a little when nobody scolds you for your presumption at authority.

“I need a single source for naming conventions and issue status. If teams are saving local copies with informal labels, we’ll lose track by Wednesday. I need consultant contacts for drawing queries, one person per discipline if possible, so questions don’t scatter across five threads. And I need the existing title block and revision protocol checked against city requirements before anyone starts building sheets.”

There is a moment of unbearable silence as those around you take in what you’ve just requested of them.

Have you said too much? Too little? Was that obvious? Did you sound like you were pretending to lead before the authority had settled? Does everyone think you are merely repeating things from a project management article you once read at one in the morning while eating cereal from a mug?

Dorn looks at you.

“Good,” he says.

One word.

He turns to Guilliman. “Can your office provide city document requirements and consultant contact confirmations by noon?”

Guilliman is already making a note. “Yes.”

“Dev, Livia, Johanna, Marcus,” Dorn continues. “Send her your current file locations and latest received backgrounds by two. Include date received, source, and whether you consider the file reliable. If the answer is ‘probably’, explain why it is not ‘yes’.”

Rena leans slightly toward you without looking away from her notebook and whispers, barely audible, “Look at you, terrifying already.”

You nearly choke.

By the time Dorn says, “Core team remain. Everyone else is dismissed,” your notebook is a disaster of arrows, boxes, circled deadlines, and one tiny drawing Rena has made in the corner of a person being crushed under a stack of plans.

Chairs scrape back. People stand, gather tablets, murmur. The general staff file out carrying fresh assignments and the haunted expression of people who have glimpsed the next two months and found them suddenly devoid of PTOs.

Some nod at you. Some do not. One junior drafter, Elias, gives you a quick, awkward thumbs-up that looks as though he regrets it halfway through. You appreciate it anyway.

You sit with Marcus, Livia, Dev, Johanna, Rena, Dorn, Guilliman, and Nisha Varma from project administration, who has the terrifyingly serene expression of someone who can find any email ever sent by any human being since the dawn of electricity.

“Now,” he says. “The less comfortable part.”

Dev mutters, “Excellent,” under his breath, earning a nudge aimed at his ribs from Livia.

Dorn ignores both, though you suspect he hears everything. Possibly including thoughts.

“This project will attract attention,” Dorn says. “From the city, from the press eventually, from other firms that wanted the contract, and from internal leadership. That means mistakes will travel faster than corrections. We do not feed that process by being careless with communication.”

“No speculation in written threads. No blame assignment in email. No informal commitments on schedule. No undocumented verbal instructions. If the city asks for a change, it goes into the log. If a consultant issues a revised background, it goes into the log. If someone says, ‘quick update’ in a corridor, you send a summary afterwards and ask them to confirm.”

Dorn’s gaze comes to you.

“Your coordination log is the spine. If it is weak, the rest of the body will not stand.”

Wonderful. Your spreadsheet will now make or break this project!

You nod. “Understood.”

“Do you have a template?”

“I can build one from the Eastbank School project log and modify the categories for multi-use public requirements.”

Marcus looks over. “Eastbank log was solid.”

“It was,” Dorn says. “Use it as a base. Improve it.”

Guilliman speaks then. “I’ll have my office share public reporting fields with you as well. The city will require traceability on major decisions. If your log tracks the decision chain clearly, we can use it to support Friday reporting without duplicating work.”

You look at him. “That would help.”

“Good,” Guilliman says. “Nisha will coordinate with you.”

Nisha gives you a crisp smile. “I’ll send you the fields after this.”

“Thank you,” you say, and write NISHA, REPORTING FIELDS in a box so heavily outlined it looks like a bunker.

The core discussion moves quickly after that. It is more practical than the larger meeting, more dangerous too, because the general shape has given way to actual details on who needs what, by when. What is needed and where… the minutiae that make up your days.

You listen, write, and ask two more questions when terror temporarily fails to strangle you. Both of which earn you surprised glances from the more senior people around you.

Finally, Dorn closes the folder.

“Initial actions are clear. You have until Friday to establish the coordination framework. I do not expect perfection by Friday. But I will need honest effort.”

Chairs scrape again. Tablets lock. Marcus is already speaking quietly to Livia about survey control. Dev and Johanna begin debating plant-room adjacency before they have fully stood. Rena squeezes your shoulder once as she rises, quick and fierce, then releases before anyone can make it sentimental.

“You’re going to be okay,” she murmurs.

Your mouth says, “Sure,” because your mouth is a liar with office-appropriate training.

Nisha pauses beside you. “I’ll send those fields in ten minutes. Also, congratulations.”

“Thanks,” you manage.

Guilliman remains near the screen, speaking softly with Dorn. Their voices are too low to catch. You gather your notebook slowly because your hands need the extra time. The room feels too bright now, too glass-walled, too visible. Through the transparent partitions, the drafting floor moves in its usual patterns, though you can sense the news spreading already. Heads tilt together. Screens are glanced at. Someone points toward the conference room and then pretends he has not.

You are halfway to the door when Dorn says your name.

“Yes, sir?”

Guilliman’s gaze shifts between the two of you with calm, unreadable attention. Then he looks back to his tablet, giving the illusion of privacy while remaining very much in the room. HR and Finance, you think faintly, must be an excellent training ground for appearing absent while recording everything with frightening accuracy.

Dorn stands behind the conference table, one hand resting on the closed municipal folder.

“I will speak with you at two,” he says. “Bring your preliminary thoughts on the log structure. Rough is acceptable.”

You nod. “Yes, sir.”

“And your current workload summary.”

“Yes, sir.”

You expect him to dismiss you. But instead, he says, “Do not spend the next three hours trying to solve the entire project.”

“I wasn’t going to,” you say, feeling a little called out.

Dorn’s brow lifts slightly.

Guilliman, traitorously, looks back down at his tablet with the faintest suggestion of amusement near his mouth.

Dorn says, “Good.”

The word is dry enough to be dust.

Heat creeps up your neck.

“I’ll... organise my notes,” you say, because that sounds more reasonable than ‘I will now go spiral in a controlled professional manner.’

“That would be a better use of time,” he says.

You nod once more, then escape the conference room before your face can do something career-limiting.

You return to your desk through a corridor of half-hidden glances. Nobody says anything immediately. That is almost worse. Silence can be polite. It can also have teeth.

When you sit, your chair feels different. Your desk feels different. The sticky notes on your monitor remain absurdly normal.

CHECK ROOF DRAINAGE DETAIL.

ASK ME ABOUT REVISION CLOUDS.

MEETING 10:30? BIG ONE?

You pick up the last one and stare at it.

Yes, Rena. Big one.

You turn it over and write on the back:

‘Bastion Civic Centre.’

‘Workstream Integration Lead.’

‘Friday.’

‘Do not die.’

Then you stick it to the bottom of your monitor where only you can see it.

Soon, your inbox begins to bloom: Marcus Hale has shared a folder. Livia Chen has forwarded survey files. Nisha Varma has sent reporting fields. Dev Malhotra has sent a message with the subject line: MEP BACKGROUNDS, MAY GOD HAVE MERCY. Rena has sent only: breathe, menace.

Across the floor, Dorn exits the conference room with Guilliman at his side. They pause outside the glass doors, speaking quietly. Guilliman says something with that calm, measured expression of his. Dorn listens, folder tucked under one arm, face severe enough to make even the municipal seal look nervous.

Then Guilliman departs toward the executive corridor.

Dorn stands there for half a second longer, looking down at the folder in his hand. After that, he turns and walks back to his office.

You only happen to glance up at exactly the moment he closes his office door behind him and sets the Bastion folder on his desk with careful precision.

Then your phone buzzes.

Stoneheart007 - 11:47 AM Casualty report?

You look at the message.

For a moment, the whole morning tips toward him. Toward the old reflex. Open the door. Tell him everything. Let Stoneheart make a joke about municipal bosses and evil scheduling goblins. Let him say he has your back. Let that invisible steadiness take some of the load before you even learn where to set it down.

Your thumb hovers as you contemplate a response. Then, you look across the floor.

Dorn is in his office now, seated behind his desk, the municipal folder open before him. He looks severe, remote, exactly as he should. One hand rests beside the folder. The other is out of sight below the desk line, perhaps reaching for a pen, perhaps nothing at all.

Yet you can still hear his voice from ten minutes ago.

‘What do you need first?’

Not a rescue. A question.

You type slowly.

Troublemaker2301 - 11:49 AM Promoted? Drafted? Sacrificed? Unclear. Work just handed me a public building and a shovel.

Stoneheart007 - 11:50 AM That sounds severe.

Troublemaker2301 - 11:50 AM It is. I’m trying not to panic.

Across the office, Dorn reads the words beneath the edge of the municipal folder and feels them land with more force than they should.

He looks through the glass.

You sit at your desk, shoulders held carefully, phone low in your hands, and your face turned slightly away from the room. From anyone else, the posture might look like texting. To him, it reads as bracing against a wall while pretending to not crumble into a nervous heap.

Stoneheart cannot say ‘I assigned it because I believe you can do it.’

Stoneheart cannot say ‘The shovel is not for your grave. It is for the foundation.’

Stoneheart cannot say ‘I will meet you at two and we will begin.’

And so, he types what he can.

Stoneheart007 - 11:52 AM Panic doesn’t mean you’re not capable. It just means that you understand the size of what you have been handed.

You want to believe it with the sudden hungry ache of someone who has spent too long confusing fear with fraudulence.

When you open your eyes, your screen is still full of new emails. The Bastion folder waits. The sticky note at the bottom of your monitor says ‘Do not die.’

Across the floor, Dorn’s office door opens again.

You hear him, though. The measured steps. The tiny recalibration of the office air. The way people around you become a little more focused, a little more upright.

He passes behind your row.

For a moment, his shadow crosses the edge of your desk.

Your phone buzzes once more.

Stoneheart007 - 11:53 AM Start with what you need first. Then the next thing. No heroic last stands before lunch.

Dorn is at the far end of the aisle now, speaking to Marcus, municipal folder under one arm, expression stern enough to frighten reinforced concrete into confessing its weaknesses. His other hand holds his phone, likely to call some poor contractor and scare his soul into compliance.

Start with what you need first.

The coincidence is small. Reasonable. The kind of practical advice two competent men might both give. There is no reason for it to catch in your mind like a thread snagged on a nail.

You look back down at your phone.

Troublemaker2301 - 11:55 AM Boss said something similar.

You send it before you can think too much.

Across the floor, Dorn stops speaking for half a beat.

Marcus pauses. “Everything all right?”

“Yes,” Dorn says.

It is an answer to several questions at once and a lie to most of them.

Later, Dorn stands behind his desk, one hand resting on the back of his chair, and feels the first thin crackle of danger move through the morning.

You are noticing echoes.

Not clearly yet. Not consciously. You are too overwhelmed by the project to follow that path fully. But the echo has sounded.

He types with care.

Stoneheart007 - 11:59 AM Then he may be correct for once.

Rena, passing behind you with a stack of folders, looks down. “Did you just laugh at your phone?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

“Go away.”

“Proud of you, lead.”

Rena says it lightly, affectionately, like a tease. Yet it lands with weight. Real weight.

You look at the project folder on your screen.

Bastion Civic Centre… Workstream Coordination… Your initials beside the workstream.

For a moment, your fear is still there, large and breathing.

Start with what you need first.

You open a blank coordination log.

You type the title anyway.

BASTION CIVIC CENTRE Workstream Integration Log Phase One

Then, you start typing. And little by little, the work begins to take shape.

It does not feel heroic. It feels like laying the first brick in an empty field where Dorn sees a wall in the making. It still looks like an empty field to you.

Still, you lay it.

And in his glass office across the floor, Rogal Dorn watches you begin, realizing he has now set into motion, events that may change both your worlds.

I swear the plot thickens, my friends! I'll be getting to the juicy "burn" of this infernal "Slow Burn" soon!!

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this chapter that almost did me in!!

As always, thank you for all the support you show me and for taking the time to read this and express your comments and reblogs! I love you all!!

Until next time, Ciao!