The air in the Ancestor Vault had changed. It was no longer the stale, chemical scent of a tomb, but the sharp, electric tang of a laboratory coming back to life. But the warmth I expected from a "rescue" wasn't there. Instead, the room felt like a courtroom where we were already found guilty.
The silver-haired woman—her name-tag, still pinned to her stasis-gown, read Dr. Aris Thorne—stepped over a pile of dead "Scrub-Drone" scrap with a look of profound disgust. She didn't look like someone who had just been saved from an eternity of digestion; she looked like an executive whose office had been trashed.
"I asked you a question," Thorne said, her voice cutting through the whimpering of the other awakened Originals. "What are you doing in the Cradle? And where is the Lead Architect?"
"If
