✦
Pressure doesn't stop when it fails.
It recalculates.
The city woke into a different kind of tension—not weight, not fear, but momentum that felt… artificial. Like a system trying to generate movement where none was needed.
Things were speeding up again.
Not naturally.
Deliberately.
✦
Arjun felt it the moment we stepped into the central flow.
"They're accelerating," he said."Too fast for no reason."
"Yes," I replied."Pressure thinks speed creates cracks."
✦
The other Ishaan aligned, voice calm and exact.
When pressure can't break stone, he said,it tries to outrun it.
✦
By midmorning, the pattern was obvious.
Deadlines compressed.Parallel tasks multiplied.Dependencies stacked again—this time aggressively.
It wasn't subtle.
It was force disguised as urgency.
✦
A directive circulated—still framed as guidance.
To ensure continuity, teams are encouraged to adopt accelerated operational cycles.
Encouraged.
Again.
✦
Arjun scoffed."They're pushing tempo."
