The last thing you wanted to be is on Henry White's shit-list. A hard thing to avoid, since it took little to get there.

Hold eye contact for too long? Shit list. Get his coffee order wrong? Shit list. Make a loud noise while he was trying to think? Shit list.

But above all, that which made him seethe with unbridled anger, was to have his time wasted. For Henry White, time was money, and money was short at the moment. Way too short for his liking.

And there was no bigger time-waster in Henry's eyes than a marketing meeting. A handful of kids, fresh out of college, thinking they can re-invent the wheel, but all they do is putting new bells and whistles to the same beat-up car advertisers have been running since the '50s.

"Okay, so, like," said one of the kids from the advertisement department, in a suit two sizes bigger than him, made for a man two feet shorter than him. "Well, imagine this scene. A man in a tattered soldier's uniform shuffles his way up a steep dune, with nothing but a deep, lonely desert around him. A set of heavy and rusty chains coil around his neck, chest, and legs-a deep contrast to his emaciated body. His beard, grey and matted with filth, blows in the wind."

A small projector behind him showed a rough outline of the scene he was portraying. Part of it was obscured by his own body getting in the middle of the beam. It was obvious he was nervous, which Henry found particularly satisfying.

"Every step seems to tighten the chains to his body. Legs shaking, he musters every ounce of strength to move one foot forward, then the other. The man stumbles, his chains too heavy, his bare feet bloody and sore. He collapses under his own weight; his knees try and fail to break his fall. He lies sprawled on the dune, sand rapidly enveloping him. Then, the narrator speaks."

"When the darkness casts its long shadow and the nightmares prowl in every corner, there is only one hope," he said, with an epic inflection.

"A flurry, like, blows away the sand surrounding the man, cleaning the desert like a sweeping broom. The rusty chains turn into wisps of smoke, whisked away by the fresh winds of the east. His beard becomes vapor in the air, and his harrowed cheeks fill up with a fresh coat of life. The ripped uniform turns into a business suit.

From the ground around him, skyscrapers burst out like a child's pop-up book, transforming the desolated wasteland into a bursting metropolis.

A huge flag waves in the background; the good old Red, White, and Blue looks slightly translucent in the distance. The man looks up at the sky, with the poise and confidence of a person who knows life is going to be okay. He is surrounded by women. Busty, blonde, American women."

"Geber Laboratories presents:

DayDream, the Drug that lets you Dream-awake!

Tired of waking up in the middle of the night, covered in sweat? Had enough of that pesky PTSD creeping up on you in the middle of your morning walk? Want to leave that crippling anxiety behind?

Peace: Only a Daydream aw-"

The screen, and the room went black with an audible snap, cutting the image behind the kid abruptly. Only a tinge of static lingered in the glass room.

All eyes were immediately cast at the culprit, the burly, middle-aged man sitting at the head of the conference table. Slowly, he took his hand away from the remote, placing it delicately on the table in front of him. He lay back on his leather chair with his hands clasped tightly. The blood-red ruby on his ring twinkled under the dim lights. At no point did he break eye contact with the young man at the end of the table who was in the midst of a very anxiety attack.

He already knew the next target of his shit-list.

"Mr. White, sir...what's the matter?" said the young man, fidgeting with a pen in his hand.

Those not accustomed to Henry White would describe him as pensive. He rarely spoke out and mostly kept to himself. On the rare occasions he did speak it was only a sentence or two. His movements were slow and calculated - not a single gesture wasted or out of place. This undoubtedly made him an incredibly intimidating person, especially in moments like this, when instead of answering the fidgeting figure in front of him, he tried to play his favorite sport: using his steel-blue eyes to stare a hole into the skull of whoever happened to piss him off.

"I wasn't fini-" the young man mumbled, trying in vain to continue, but was cut off by Henry's raised palm.

Shuffling a few papers on his desk for what felt like forever, Henry finally spoke in a whisper - a technique he used to force people to really pay attention to what he had to say. "William, wasn't it? Do you know what we do here?"

William was taken aback by the sudden question, thinking this was some kind of trick. "Yes sir, we-"

Again, he was cut off by the massive hand. "No, you do not. We aren't a booze company trying to sell beers and trucks to some patriotic shmucks that would buy anything wrapped in red, white, and blue. We sell medicine, and rather risky ones at that. We don't wanna be the next Purdue Pharma, nor have regulators up our ass asking us why we are advertising our products like so artsy colleague B-tier film. We provide a necessary product for the mental health of this nation, and there is that. Period."

Henry stood up from his seat with all the eyes in the room still on him. He relished in their attention. As he began to walk out of the room, he issued one final command. "Scrap everything. We don't need an ad for a one-night event. Murray, a word with you, if you please."

A squat, jellybowl of a man sitting to his right stood up with an audible grunt, following Henry outside of the glass conference room. Once well outside public earshot, Henry broke the silence.

"I don't know why the fuck I listen to you sometimes, Mur. That was a fiasco, and I hold you personably responsible."

Murray was barely able to keep up with Henry, straining his short, stubby legs. "Jesus Christ, Henry, cut the kid some slack. You didn't have to chew him out like that. You know Clara is gonna fuck me in a non-biblical way if her nephew comes crying like a little bitch because his boss didn't pander to his daddy issues on his first presentation."

"Next time, don't hire your deadbeat nephew pitch an ad," said Henry, arriving at a door. "Maybe you'll learn to think with your head instead of your dick."

Pushing the handle of a metal door reading "Henry S. White - CEO", they entered a small lobby. The room, just like the rest of the building, was stark-white, evoking the feeling of some avant-garde yuppie company, save for the furniture that was jet black.

The only things that broke the minimalist aesthetic were a pair of oaken doors, right next to a clean-cut black desk that hid a woman, red-haired and fairly curvaceous. She was reading something or another on a laptop, but snapped to attention when Murray chortled lecherously at her.

"Hey, Linda. Looking cute as a button, as always."

Ignoring Murray's remarks, she adjusted her thick panto glasses while combing through the laptop. "Mr. White, General McMan called. He wants to make sure the meeting is going to take place as scheduled. Also, the florist called and asked if they could swing by the Plaza at 3:00 PM to start the decorations."

Henry scoffed. "Tell the General we are on schedule, but to call tomorrow just in case. And I do not care what the flower people do, so long as they do it on time. Also, call my car. I'll be leaving early."

Acknowledging his instructions with a curt nod, Linda grabbed the phone to make the appropriate calls.

As they opened the twin wooden doors, they stepped into an office quite unlike any other room in the entire building. Instead of the pristine marble floors of the lobby, this room was wall-to-wall hardwood floor The slick white walls that permeated the building were replaced by art-deco wooden panels. A flush mount light fixture brought the whole thing together, casting its warm glow onto the shiny mahogany desk. The whole room cried of luxury.

Henry was an old-fashioned man with old-fashioned tastes. He disliked his generation's sickening overuse of technology, preferring the antique designs of a time when Americans had money to spend and flaunt it in other people's faces. He did not even own a computer in his office. That was handled mostly by Linda, his assistant. That room was, quite literally, Henry's last-ditch effort reject modernity - the trench in the no man's land of minimalism that was Geber Laboratories.

Murray shuffled quickly to the minibar, pouring a couple of glasses of a murky, amber liquid.

"Here," said Murray, roughly shoving a glass of Bourbon into Henry's hand. He took it neat, while Henry's clinked thanks to the coarse ice inside. "Anyways, what's the plan now, chief? Gonna suck the investor's peckers and asking them not to invest in other companies, pretty please?"

Henry took a swig of Bourbon, making sure to cover every inch of his palate with the musky taste of that Black Maple Hill sweetness. "The numbers aren't that bad. But yes, that's the gist of it. Just me, a mike, and my wits. And by my wits I mean yours. Draft me something that will blow their hungry little minds by tonight, at dinner. My place?"

Murray took his usual place on the old leather couch, placing his drink between his hand and his gut. He could never shake the look of being perpetually tired. His short legs and his barrel-chested figure, combined with a lethargic and sedentary lifestyle made him quite an unhealthy man; he should not have been drinking at all - doctor's orders. He so very much wanted to tell the doctor where he can shove his orders, but he never cursed in front of Clara, his wife. No overeating and no overdoing, and no overstressing, something simple to say but hard to achieve. Nevertheless, he was about to break at least one of those orders.

"Sure, why the fuck not. But before that, we gotta talk about Glocal."

Henry placed a hand on his face, trying in vain to wipe away his tiredness. Murray took his silence as an acknowledgment and continued.

"Our guys are telling me that the feds wanna invest with them, too. Lots of moolah, by the sound of it. I'm talking about farmer's-daughter-on-a-first-date kind of generous."

"Shit." Pinching the bridge of his nose, Henry let himself break out of his straight posture, hunching over in contempt.

Geber Laboratories was once the leading pharmaceutical company in America. Their signature drug, "Mandrakxin," had been the prime drug for psychiatric treatment for decades. At $900 a dose, not only was it the most expensive drug on the market but the most effective one by far. That was the power of Geber's monopoly.

That was until an upstart company called Glocal Pharmaceuticals released a similar, but different enough drug called Mandrik. It was a lot cheaper than Mandrakxin and much easier to acquire. Geber Labs was forced to lower the pricing, among other things, just to stay competitive.

Henry shuddered at the thought of losing this contract to Glocal, of all people. "We can't fuck this contract, Mur. We can't afford to."

"You are preaching to the choir," mocked Murray. "We're bleeding money, and Glocal knows it. But," he said, leaning forward, "I got an idea. It's risky, but we kinda need a Hail Mary at this point: we set up a demo."

"A demo?" asked Henry. He didn't like where things were going.

"Look, the General's an old pal of mine. You know, 4th of July barbecues, bat mitzvahs, that sort of malarkey. If I can convince him to have a taste test, just a little demo, things will go smoother than a pig in a line factory."

Henry snorted. It was a stupid idea at best. Intriguing, but stupid. "I had enough with one stupid idea today, Mur."

Murray didn't take kindly to Henry's disbelief, huffing in contempt. "Lemme finish. The man lost a son a few months ago. Blown away by a mine while on duty. Some nasty stuff, if you ask me. The guy's sick with grief. If we give him a demo, and things turn out for the best...well, you get the picture."

Suddenly, it didn't seem so outlandish. If, and with a capital I, if Murray could successfully convince General McMan, he was confident the drug could speak for him. Henry imagined a life when all VA hospitals around the country carried his prized medicine. From Albuquerque to New York. A dream that could slip away at any moment if-

No, thought Henry, that won't happen. Can't happen. They had to lock the deal down, fast. Henry quickly shook the thought out of his mind, taking a swig out of the now watered down Bourbon.

On moments like these, Henry felt the urge to move around, or his legs would start to itch. He stood up immediately, going straight to the overflowing bookcase opposing the couch. He was not looking for any book in particular, only scanning the spines from left to right, top to bottom, just to find something focus on. On what? He did not know. Staying busy helped him think, is all. "I'll think about it and give you my answer tonight," he finally said.

As if commanding his attention back from the uninteresting musing of his books, he became oddly aware of the ragged breathing of the fat man sprawled on his couch.

"Are you going to sit there and fart on my cushions all day, or are you going to write the damn speech?"

"Just finishing my drink, Henry. Jesus," he says, downing the glass in one go. "Waste of a good drink."

Without moving his gaze from the books, Henry gave him a nonchalant wave, signaling his approval. "Send in Linda before you leave. And close the door."

Murray gave him a slightly demeaning and complicit look. "Who's thinking with his dick now?"

"I just want to know if my car is ready," said Henry.

"Just saying, be careful. I don't want you to get me too'ed," he says, disappearing out of the room.

A few seconds after Murray left, a shy knock barely registered on the huge oaken door.

"Come in."

Slowly, the door opened, making way for Linda. She was slightly trembling, as she always did around Henry. Maybe she knew that, deep inside of him, Henry wanted to toss her against the couch and have his way with her. She could see it in his eyes — a lust that consumed him.

"Is my car ready?" asked Henry.

"Yes, sir," said Linda. "It is waiting for you."

Henry acknowledged her with a nod, noting how it almost gave him goosebumps the way she called him "sir" while grabbing his coat and hat from a nearby coat-hanger. On his way out of the office, he gave her a small smack in the butt, eliciting a yelp from the secretary.

His body was restless, but his mind was elsewhere.

The cool December air took a bite out of Henry as soon as he stepped out of the office building. There was something about Boston in the winter that made the city smell so unique this time of the year. An earthy, saturated coldness that was barely there, but one that never quite dissipates, no matter where you go. It was never a pleasant smell for Henry, having lived for most of his life in Florida. It only worked as a reminder that this cold was going to linger for four more months.

But the winter in his mind was not about the cold air, but the looming threat. The future of his company, of his legacy, was hanging in the balance, and the next few days were going to decide his fate in ways he didn't even imagine.

What awaited him was his own personal hell.

30 HOURS BEFORE THE DISASTER