Adam sat down before his legs decided for him.
The chair made a small sound under his weight. The room was still full of chips, empty bottles, medicine strips, and two phones that had brought him four different problems in the same hour. For a moment he only sat there with his hands on his knees and his head lowered.
Then he took a deep breath.
'Think, Adam.' Adam thought. 'This is not the time to panic. This is the time to work.'
The words did not remove the pressure, but they gave it a shape. A shaped problem could be moved, one piece at a time.
He looked at the phones again. His father was with John, Aster Core needed stock confirmation, Bruno's outer network was bleeding, and Tobin's chair was splitting before he had even learned how to sit on it properly.
