The room was very quiet. The dimensional shielding pulsed at a frequency just below hearing. The Hound's presence behind Cael's sternum was the only steady thing.
'You're telling me he's been alive for twenty years. That he's been in the source world. That he built the modified formations. That he left me a trail and waited for me to watch him leave.'
'Yes.'
'And the name. Voss. Me ending up in the same city as the first Fracture. Receiving the Hollow class. That's not coincidence.'
'No,' Fen Cas said. 'It's not.'
Cael stood. He walked to the pressure charts on the wall. The lines trended downward. Two to six years. The window was closing. It had always been closing.
'Why now,' he said. 'Why wait twenty years. Why let me grow up thinking he was dead. Six years as a porter. A year in
