Chapter 3: THE ANNOUNCEMENT
Logan's office smelled like leather and decades of cigar smoke that no amount of cleaning could erase. Dark wood. Heavy furniture. The kind of space designed to remind you that someone more important than you had built an empire from this room.
We filed in. Kendall first. Shiv second. Connor shambling behind. Me last.
Logan sat behind his desk like a king on his throne. Frank stood to his right. Gerri to his left. The old guard. The ones who'd survived decades of Roy family warfare by being indispensable.
"Sit." Logan gestured at chairs arranged in a semicircle. Not quite equal. Never equal.
I took the one closest to the door. Habit. Roman always positioned near exits.
My hand touched the armrest. Empathy Engine flickered. Whoever sat here last had been anxious. Desperately anxious. Thoughts spiraling about failure and disappointment and never being enough.
I pulled my hand back. Focused on Logan.
He looked tired. More tired than he had at the party. The pressure in his head was building. I couldn't read it from this distance without touch, but I could see it in the way he moved. The slight delay in his gestures. The micro-expression of discomfort he couldn't quite hide.
Any minute now.
"I want to talk about the future," Logan said. "About what happens when I'm not here anymore."
Kendall straightened. Shiv's mask slipped for half a second. Connor looked like he was already tuning out.
"You're eighty, Dad." Shiv's voice carried forced lightness. "You're not going anywhere."
"Everyone goes somewhere eventually." Logan's hand moved to his temple. Rubbed. "The question is what we leave behind."
He launched into it. Legacy. Building the company. What it meant to carry the Roy name. All the usual patriarch bullshit about succession and worthiness and who deserved to sit in this office after he was gone.
I watched him. Tracked every movement. Every pause.
His left hand trembled. Just slightly. He hid it by gripping the desk.
The blood vessels in his brain were failing. Microscopically. Building toward catastrophic rupture.
"Kendall." Logan's focus shifted. "You've been interim CEO before."
"For two days. During your recovery from food poisoning."
"You think you're ready for more?"
Kendall's jaw worked. "I've been ready."
"Have you?"
The question hung there. Loaded. Logan's favorite weapon. The implication that whatever answer you gave would be wrong.
"I've worked for this company since I was twenty-two," Kendall said. Measured. Careful. "I know it. I understand it. I'm ""
Logan's face changed.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just... wrong. Like someone had unplugged something essential and the system was trying to compensate.
His left hand went to his head. Gripped. His mouth opened but no words came out.
"Dad?" Shiv stood.
Logan's face twisted. Asymmetric. The left side drooping while the right stayed normal. His body listed to one side.
"Shit. Shit." Frank lunged forward.
Logan collapsed.
Not gracefully. No cinematic slow-motion. Just a sudden loss of control as his brain misfired and his body stopped responding to commands.
I was already moving.
Muscle memory. EMT training from a life I didn't technically live anymore. But the knowledge was there, burning in my synapses like it had always been mine.
I caught him before his head hit the desk. Lowered him to the floor. Turned him on his side.
"Call 911!" I didn't look up. Didn't need to. "Now!"
Shiv fumbled for her phone. Kendall stood frozen. Connor backed toward the wall like he could escape what was happening by putting distance between himself and the crisis.
Frank dropped to his knees beside me. "Is he ""
"Stroke. Left side facial droop, loss of motor control, sudden onset. We need paramedics."
"How do you ""
"Doesn't matter. Keep his airway clear. Don't let him move."
I checked Logan's pulse. Rapid. Irregular. His breathing was shallow but present. Alive. For now.
The Empathy Engine surged without me activating it. Proximity. Physical contact. Logan's mind was chaos. Not thoughts. Not anymore. Just fractured signals and misfiring neurons and the desperate animal panic of a brain trying to keep a body functional while parts of it died.
I pulled back. Forced the power down. Couldn't help him by drowning in his neurological catastrophe.
"Ambulance is coming." Shiv's voice shook. "They said ten minutes."
"Tell them stroke. Eighty-year-old male. Sudden onset. Left side affected."
She repeated it into the phone. Her hands were trembling.
Kendall finally moved. Knelt on Logan's other side. "Is he going to die?"
"Not if the paramedics get here in time." I kept my voice flat. Calm. Roman's natural sarcasm wouldn't help here. "Keep back. Give him space."
"You're just going to sit there and ""
"I'm keeping him alive until professionals arrive. That's what I'm doing."
Marcia burst through the door. Her face went white. "Logan."
"Stroke," Gerri said. Crisp. Professional. Already thinking three steps ahead. "Paramedics en route."
"Will he..." Marcia couldn't finish the sentence.
"We don't know," I said. Honest. Because I didn't. Not really. The show implied he survived this. But the show wasn't real. This was real. Logan's pulse under my fingers was real. The slight rattle in his breathing was real.
I'd changed something by catching him. By responding fast. By not being useless.
What else would change because of it?
The ten minutes felt like hours. Logan's breathing stayed shallow. His pulse jumped and steadied and jumped again. His eyes were open but unfocused. Seeing nothing.
The great Logan Roy. Reduced to meat and failing signals.
Sirens finally cut through the silence. Footsteps in the hall. The paramedics arrived with efficiency born from doing this a thousand times.
I stepped back. Let them work.
They asked questions. I answered. Time of onset. Symptoms. Current state. They listened. Nodded. Loaded Logan onto a stretcher with practiced care.
"Family?" one of them asked.
"We'll follow," Gerri said. Command voice. Taking charge because someone had to. "Which hospital?"
"NewYork-Presbyterian. Manhattan."
They wheeled Logan out. Marcia followed. The rest of us stood in the office that suddenly felt too large and too empty.
Kendall's phone buzzed. Then Shiv's. Then Frank's. Then everyone's.
The news was out. Logan Roy had collapsed. Logan Roy was in an ambulance. Logan Roy might be dying.
The board would be circling within the hour.
"We need to get to the hospital," Shiv said. Voice steadier now. Political instincts kicking in. "We need to be there. All of us. United front."
"United front," Kendall echoed. Hollow. "Right."
Connor looked lost. "Is Dad going to ""
"We don't know." I cut him off. Kindness wouldn't help. "We go to the hospital. We wait. We figure it out from there."
They filed out. Following Gerri's lead because someone had to lead and Logan couldn't anymore.
I stayed behind for a moment. Looked at the spot where Logan had fallen. Where I'd caught him. Where I'd done something different than the original Roman would have.
My hands weren't shaking. Should have been. Normal people's hands shook after something like that.
But I wasn't normal. Wasn't even really Roman. I was something else. Something that shouldn't exist.
And I'd just saved Logan Roy's life.
Or prolonged it.
Or changed nothing at all.
The uncertainty was going to kill me faster than any stroke.
I left the office. Closed the door. Walked through halls filled with staff who didn't know whether to clean up the party or stand vigil for their dying king.
The car was waiting. Kendall and Shiv already inside. I slid in beside them.
Nobody spoke.
We drove toward the hospital through Manhattan traffic that didn't care about Roy family drama. The city moved. Indifferent. Eternal.
I watched it pass. Thought about Logan's pulse under my fingers. About the Empathy Engine showing me the stroke before it happened. About powers I barely understood and a future I could no longer predict.
This was day one.
I'd woken up in the wrong body with supernatural abilities and perfect knowledge of a TV show that was now my life.
I'd used those abilities to save the man who would become my greatest enemy or my only path to survival, depending on how I played this.
The game had begun.
I just had to decide what winning looked like.
The hospital appeared ahead. White stone and glass. Temple to modern medicine where Logan Roy would fight death and probably win because men like him didn't die from strokes.
They died from their children.
Eventually.
The car stopped. We got out. Walked through automatic doors into fluorescent lighting and the smell of antiseptic.
The game had begun.
And I was all in.
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