... phone in his pocket. A crucial email. A late-night request. He excused himself immediately, reaching for the device. The screen was black. There was no notification, no text, no email. The vibration had been entirely phantom, a neurological tremor, a sign that his nervous system was so perpetually conditioned to work demands that it was creating its own alerts. He stared at the blank screen, realising the real problem wasn't the email volume, but the internal cage ...