On his way to the service elevator, Daniel stopped to help a young analyst named Nia Washington whose wheeled suitcase had caught between the lobby tiles. She was carrying a laptop bag, a folder of charts, and a coffee that had lost its lid in the confusion. Daniel freed the wheel, gathered the pages, and found a clean napkin before any liquid reached her computer. Nia thanked him too quickly, glancing over her shoulder at the elevator bank. She had a presentation scheduled in fifteen minutes and had spent most of the night at the hospital with her mother.
"Did you get any sleep?" Daniel asked. Nia shook her head.
He did not tell her to be stronger or better organized. He simply carried the suitcase to the elevator and pointed out that the meeting room on twelve had working lights, fresh batteries in its remote, and a spare laptop cable behind the podium. "And there should be a bottle of water on the shelf," he added. "If there's not, tell reception I asked them to bring you one."
"You always know where everything is," she said. Daniel smiled as the elevator arrived. "Not everything. Just the things people need when something goes wrong." She tried to offer him money for the help, and he shook his head before she could open her wallet.
He had long ago decided that assistance was most useful when people did not have to stop and calculate what they owed afterward. By the time Daniel reached the maintenance office, six new requests were waiting in the queue. A faucet leaked on the fifth floor, a loading dock shutter would not close completely, and someone had reported an intermittent alarm from the executive corridor. The final request carried no description beyond the words URGENT - SECURE DOOR, followed by a name he recognized from Victoria Grant's executive office. Daniel printed the request and