Priya met me in the wings.

She was holding my water bottle and her iPad.

“That was incredible, Sarah,” she said.

Her fingers were already tapping rapidly on the screen.

“The Stanford communications team is livestreaming this, and the feed is blowing up.”

“Did you see Derek?” I asked, taking a sip of water.

“I saw someone in the back,” Priya said. “But I was looking at the viewer count.”

She turned the screen toward me.

The live comment section was scrolling so fast the text blurred.

“They are clipping your quote about the cost of success,” she said.

We walked down the concrete corridor toward the green room.

My heels clicked rhythmically on the floor.

By the time we reached the room, my own phone began to vibrate in my pocket.

It was a continuous, buzzing pulse.

I pulled it out.

The notifications were a steady stream of names and numbers.

“We need to get back to the office,” I said.

“The Solar Reach website is already slowing down,” Priya said, looking up from her tablet. “We are getting massive traffic spikes.”