Chapter 24: Arrival & First Impressions
The sun hit the gravel lot at a cruel angle, high enough to bleach the color out of every surface. Asphalt shimmered. The metal fence rattled faintly in the breeze off the coast. And still, Clara Moreau didn’t slow her stride.
She moved like she’d been here before—press pass already hanging from her lanyard, hair tied back in a way that said "fast questions, clean footage, no games." Behind her, Ben lugged the camera bag with the weary pace of a man who knew he wasn’t getting lunch until she got her headline.
"Thought this was football, not a military base," he muttered, half to himself, half to the shoulder of her trench coat.
Clara didn’t answer. Her eyes were already scanning. Two youth players jogged by in silence, sweat clinging to their backs in damp arcs. Beyond the glass of the main training hall, someone was drawing triangles on a whiteboard. Not tactics—architecture.
She let her gaze drift across the compound—pitch, cones, GPS towers, three staffers adjusting zones with the focus of engineers prepping a flight path. No idle clapping. No jokes. Just a rhythm that hummed under the surface.
"They’re wound tight," she said under her breath, more observation than judgment.
Ben grunted, flicking open the tripod legs. "Wound or paranoid?"
Clara ignored him. Flipped open her notepad. Top line from her editor read:
MONACO: What’s Changing? Who’s Driving It?
The questions weren’t hers. Yet. But they would be.
The first interview was already queued.