There were people three deep waiting for the elevators in the lobby when Natalie arrived at the ATN building the next morning. The stairs beckoned—look at us! No waiting!—but she ignored them. Screw Bibb, she was going to ride the elevator.

When she was jostled out of the elevator, for a moment she worried she’d gotten off at the wrong floor. The seventh-floor ATN newsroom was nearly unrecognizable. The desks had been cleared away and in their place was a sea of empty ergonomic chairs arranged like an amphitheater, rippling out from an open space with a small black platform. The scene reminded Natalie of a picture she’d once seen showing the remnants of a suicide cult: all that was left of them were the posture-friendly chairs in which they died. Only in this case, a massive sign was slowly spinning over the black platform. The sign read Town Hall with the Chief and featured a bright orange countdown clock that showed thirteen minutes, twenty-nine seconds until his arrival.

The media coverage about the appointment of Reginald Bounds—aka, the Chief—as the new president of ATN, split between describing him either as a visionary or as the antichrist of news, but both sides agreed on one thing: he was going to shake things up. “I’m not in the business of tending sacred cows,” he’d been quoted as saying, “I’m in the business of making hamburgers.”

The comment had played well with the stock market, giving ATN’s parent company, American Services Industries, a healthy boost, but less well with the livestock on the news floor who were now eyeing one another with an unhinged, predatory vibe. Weaving her way between her colleagues, Natalie felt like the atmosphere was hovering uneasily between a psych ward and Lord of the Flies.

Without either friends or a desk—“No need for you to do all the work of getting cozy since who knows how long you’ll be here,” Bibb had explained—Natalie wasn’t sure where to go or who to talk to for the next twelve minutes and twenty-four seconds until the town hall.

Glancing around, Natalie spotted a tall, Asian camerawoman pressed against a wall with Handsy Hal leaning way too close. As Natalie watched, the woman managed to wriggle free and Hal’s eyes began moving deliberately over the crowd. Natalie looked away quickly and, head down, began threading her way through the clots of people gathered on the perimeter of the floor toward a row of empty seats at the back. She settled into a chair and glued her eyes to her phone.