[Ava's POV]
The incident on the boulevard was a seismic event, its aftershocks reverberating through the Vault’s concrete bones with a silent, chilling intensity. The stranger’s collapse wasn't an attack; it was a diagnosis.
Ava wasn't just a secret to be kept, or a weapon to be hidden. She was a broadcast, a psychic signal bleeding into the world on a frequency that resonated with something ancient and feral in every living thing. Containment was no longer a strategic option; it was a desperate, immediate necessity.
It was Jaxon who stepped forward into the grim silence that followed. His rationale was a model of cold logic. “Rhett’s methods are force. Lucien’s are ideology. Kael’s are command.
None are subtle. The problem is one of emission control. Of psychic dampening. It’s a tec
