The air was perpetually cold in the lower archives, redolent of old parchment, dried herbs, and the faint, bitter flavor of the rock itself. It was a region of study in silence, of consideration by the centuries. Tonight, it was an alchemist.
The argument had begun in the command center, a clipped, professional disagreement over the deployment of resources. Lyra needed the high-throughput sequencer to run a repeat analysis against the new stealth variants. Orrin would not give way on priority to make broad-spectrum antivirals for their own field operatives, who were now faced with the double threat of the virus and the Vargen.
It was a good argument. But it was an argument on the ground of fault lines running deep into the very center of the pack. The tension of Vargen's message, the con
