Lucien does not come back for forty minutes.
I know something has happened because Reth, who came back to the operations room after the south wall, checks his phone twice in fifteen minutes and says nothing, which is Reth's version of visible concern. I do not ask. I map the address Vorn sent, satellite imagery, topography, public land records and I let the forty minutes do what they need to do.
When Lucien comes back he is the same as he always is on the surface. Controlled, precise, moving with the unhurried certainty of a man who has made his decisions. But I have been watching him for seventeen days and I know the difference between the surface and what is happening below it.
Something happened.
"Tell me," I say.
He sits across from me. He looks at the satellite map I've built on
