I said it before I fully understood it.
"There is a third asset."
The words landed in the corridor with the specific weight of something that rearranges the room it falls into. Caden stopped moving. Soren stopped moving. Rowan turned from three steps ahead with an expression that moved through confusion and arrived at the specific cold of someone who has just understood that the ground they thought they were standing on has a crack in it they did not see.
"Explain," Caden said.
"The message Rowan sent," I said. "He formatted it as confirmation that I was unsupervised in the east wing. Crane should have directed his approach toward the east wing." I looked at the window at the end of the corridor. At the tree line visible through it. At the lead vehicle already turning onto the western
