Chapter 6 — Eighteen Months of Debt

The ballroom settled into darkness, and the stage washed a deep luminous blue, and Malcolm Langford stepped to the microphone to a warm ripple of applause.

He did not begin with the announcement.

He began, as decent men do, with the people.

He thanked the engineers and the floor staff and the account managers who had kept Cardinal Systems alive through eighteen months most of them had been asked to pretend were not happening — the canceled orders, the frozen raises, the suppliers who had started asking for payment in advance, the quiet fear that had moved through the building like a draft no one could find the source of.

He thanked them for their patience and their faith, and the applause that answered him had something raw in it, the sound of people who had been frightened for a long time and did not yet know whether they were allowed to stop.