Don't overreach. You're new here. Let them flail. Let them ask. Then speak.
But the silence stretched. And no one was saying it.
"If I may," I said, and the room turned.
Nathan's brow arched. Shore blinked like he'd forgotten I could speak.
I kept my voice even. "Elion's predictive load-balancing system was designed for exactly this kind of bottleneck." I pulled up the relevant page in my folder. "The architecture redistributes processing requests based on real-time usage patterns rather than static allocation. In our pilot, it reduced latency by thirty-seven percent and cut upgrade dependency by nearly half."
Silence.
Then Alicia leaned forward. "You're saying we could bypass the server backlog entirely?"
"Not bypass—mitigate. The system doesn't replace hardware upgrades, but it buys time. Enough to stagger the rollout over two quarters instead of scrambling to meet a deadline we're already behind on."
Farnsworth's pen tapped once against his notepad. "What's the implementation timeline?"
"Six weeks for a regional pilot. Ten for full deployment, assuming we prioritize APAC first."
Damien caught my eye—brief, approving—before he looked back at his folder.
But I caught it.
Linda Cavanaugh spoke for the first time in twenty minutes. "That aligns with the infrastructure review I flagged last quarter. We deprioritized it due to resource constraints, but if Elion's system can bridge the gap..." She glanced at Farnsworth. "It's worth revisiting."
"Agreed," Alicia added. "I'd like to see the pilot specs by end of next week. Ms. Sinclair, can you coordinate with my team?"
"Absolutely."
The energy in the room shifted. Subtle, but there.
A few of the skeptical glances had softened. Lang was actually taking notes. Even Shore looked mildly interested—or at least less bored.
Nathan's expression hadn't changed.
But his silence said enough.
He's waiting for something.
The thoughtcoiled in my stomach.
Then it happened.
"Moving on to the Elion integration timeline," Damien said, flipping to the next section. "Ms. Sinclair, would you like to—"
"Actually," Nathan cut in, leaning forward with that practiced casualness that made my skin prickle, "I had a few questions first. If Emma doesn't mind."
Emma.
Not Ms. Sinclair.
I smiled despite it. "Of course, Mr. Bell. What would you like to know?"
He steepled his fingers, settling back like a man with all the time in the world. "I'm just curious about the staffing model post-merger. Your team at Elion was... lean." The pause beforeleandripped with implication. "How do you plan to scale without compromising the quality control that supposedly made your infrastructure so valuable?"
Supposedly.
Another dig. Another test.
