“Not here,” I say.
His eyes move to me. “People are panicking. The City is cracking under our feet. If you have information?—”
“I said not here.”
The room stills around the edge of my voice. I feel Kavor beside me, silent and immense. Virn measuring. Adran calculating.
My arm pulses blue beneath the bandage. I press it tighter against my ribs. Adran sees the movement, his eyes narrowing just slightly.
“What happened to your arm?”
“Cut.”
“With what?”
“A thing that did not want us alive.”
His gaze sharpens. “That is not an answer.”
“It is the answer you get in a room that is collapsing.”
Virn steps forward, voice lower. “Did you find epis?”
There it is. The word does to the room what fire does to dry brush. People hear. They turn. Not all. Too many. Epis. Hope becomes hunger in half a breath.
I look at Virn and want to throttle him with his own wings. Kavor’s stillness turns dangerous. Adran’s face remains composed, but his eyes flash.
Across the room, Lysa clutches Miri to her chest and stares at me like I might have brought salvation wrapped in my bloody hands.
No. No. Not like this.
“We found proof of danger,” I say, my voice hard. “And we found enough to know no one touches anything until we understand what is happening.”
A murmur moves through the room.
Adran steps closer. “Sera, if there is epis below the City?—”
“There is a machine eating it.”
Silence. That stops them. Good.
Adran’s eyes narrow. Virn goes very still. The remaining evacuees freeze in the east hall entrance.
“A machine?” Adran asks.
“Old Tajss, off-world, maybe both, I don’t know. It’s connected to the channels under us. It’s guiding zemlja movement. It’s draining the source. And if we rush toward it like starving fools, we could crack the City open and feed ourselves to whatever woke under the pool.”
Adran absorbs this. Too quickly. That frightens me.
Kavor’s voice cuts in, low and formal. “She speaks truth.”
Adran looks at him. “And you have proof?”
Kavor’s hand settles over the bundles at his chest.
“Yes.”
The word is a mistake. Necessary. Dangerous. Still a mistake. Adran’s gaze fixes there.
