Everything in this firm smelled of old tobacco smoke and billions: the elevators, the lobby, even the coffee machine. Contracts were not read here; they felt like the weight of gold. Every office is a cell of a predatory machine that endlessly chews people's fates. They're here for a reason. Sharp corners their specialty. They knew where to play by the rules, and where to rewrite them at the right moment.

And it was around him that things started to get twisted. Roman Roy didn't fit into the system - not because he didn't know it, but because he despised it. He was a warp, a localized glitch in the algorithm, a spawn of the same machine that had shunned him. Not chaos - but an antiform. An antiperson.

They'd seen him before they'd even met - a glimpse of him, in the hallway, in the reflection of the glass partitions. He was like a flash of failure on a monitor: abrupt, out of place, and therefore impossible to ignore. There was tension in his gait, but not threatening. In his shoulders, too many words he didn't say. In his face, a hidden hysteria wrapped in sarcasm like a gift-wrapped blade. They had heard of him. Everyone has heard of him. His reputation always came first, like the front before the storm.

When he showed up in the office. The real thing is in the center, and it attracts. because it's too late to look away.