ADRIAN'S POV
I have never cared for the term "War Room." It is a title for the desperate generals who have lost their grip on the narrative and must resort to the crude, physical arithmetic of attrition. It implies a struggle. And as I stood at the head of the conference table on the highest tier of St. Jude's Key, I did not feel as though I were struggling.
I felt as though I were finally finishing a game of chess I had started when I was twenty-two, and the conference room was a marvel of translucent geometry. The walls were not walls at all, but smart-glass panels that could toggle between the breathtaking sapphire of the Atlantic and a dark, obsidian opacity. At the center sat a table carved from a single slab of petrified wood, its surface etched with the invisible circuitry that allowed us to manifest the global economy in three dimensions.
