Page 40 of Controlled Drift
Luca leaned back in his chair.“You’ve already done the hard part.”
Ethan felt something unexpected loosen in his chest.
Kael nodded once.“Looks like you just found a team.”
Ethan smiled.
Maybe—just maybe—he didn’t have to do this alone after all.
Chapter Eight
“So ...this was you?”
Marsh leaned closer to the screen, his face filling one of the video tiles, eyes bright with something dangerously close to awe.The conference room at Ethan’s end was quiet except for the soft whir of the systems and the faint echo of voices coming through the speakers.
Ethan didn’t answer straight away.He let the data cycle, let the maps and timelines scroll past—routes disrupted, accounts frozen, ports flagged, corridors collapsed.He’d spent years looking at this alone.Seeing it reflected back through someone else’s eyes was ...strange.
“Yeah,” he said finally.“Most of it.”
Marsh let out a low whistle, then another, leaning so close to the screen his nose nearly touched the camera.“Holy hell.The predictive overlaps alone—this isn’t just strategy, this is ...art.You’re forecasting human greed, logistics friction, and reaction lag all at once.”He shook his head slowly, awe written all over his face.“Do you know how hard that is to do without the system eating itself?Because I’ve tried.Repeatedly.And failed.Spectacularly.”
“That’s enough,” Niko said dryly from his seat beside Ethan.
Marsh blinked.“Enough what?”
“Flirting,” Niko replied.“Back off.”
There was a beat of silence.
Marsh’s brows pulled together in genuine confusion.“I’m not flirting.”
Dev’s face slid into view on another screen, his grin already locked in.
“Buddy,” he drawled, “you absolutely are.”
Marsh frowned.“I am not.”
