Seeking a momentary reprieve from the heavy-duty cardboard boxes and the phantom weight of his late father's decommissioned extension number still hidden beneath his desk mockups, Ryan scooped up his meeting notes and slipped away from the open-plan pod. He ducked into the small glass-walled conference room near the pantry, seeking the quiet refuge of its beechwood table and the pale, grey-white harbour light streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. The room smelled faintly of yesterday's stale conference coffee and lemon-scented surface cleaner, offering a temporary shield from the low, anxious hum of the fifth-floor marketing floor.
Walking up to the sleek wall-mounted display hub to prep the widescreen for the morning's departmental sync, Ryan paused as his eyes caught a glint of matte plastic near the auxiliary inputs. Protruding neatly from the side port of the shared conference room projector was an anonymous, untagged USB drive, left plugged directly into the system housing without a laptop or terminal in sight. A tiny, amber indicator light blinked with a slow, mechanical rhythm against the dark bezel, casting a faint pulse across the polished metal rim. Ryan's hand hovered over the cool casing, a familiar, cold knot tightening in his chest as he wondered who had left the unlabelled device wired into the building's presentation network before anyone else had even finished their morning coffee.