The elevator light buzzed like a small animal, and Everlee watched herself in the stainless-steel mirror as the floor numbers ticked up. Her hair had given up sometime after nine; the bun she’d forced in the morning had loosened into a messy crown. There were coffee stains at the collar of her blazer—one the shade of Monday—and a crescent of red lipstick on her cheek that had not been there when she left the office. She blinked at her own face. It looked like all the small defeats of the last twelve hours had calcified into an expression. She wiped the smear with the heel of her hand and gave up on blaming the mirror for fatigue. She worked in an ad agency where "overnight" meant "the account will whisper at you at three a.m." and "creativity" meant "do more with less budget and a narrower margin of legal." Tonight the client had wanted a whole product launch that made teenage customers feel like risking their life to buy—no, not quite risking, but they wanted visceral. They wanted "danger-adjacent." She had sold them something that didn't threaten anyone and still kept the city campaign within regulations. She had logged that victory into her head like a small, necessary coin. She unlocked her building door, clinging to the foyer's artificial warmth. The concierge had left the lobby lights dimmed to save energy. The hallway smelled faintly of lemon floor wax and rain