He left the empty office before dawn, moving through streets still slick with the night's condensation. The sodium lights were off, replaced by the grey pre-morning that made the city look unfinished. His jacket was damp from the walk, and his shoulder ached from a night spent against a wall that hadn't been designed for sleeping.
The decision had formed somewhere in the hours before sunrise, the way his decisions usually formed. Not a lightning strike. A slow accumulation of data points until the shape of the thing was clear and the only question was when.
He needed the Foundation. Not for resources. Not for shelter. For information about the grey figure, the gate, the shared soul signature. Sera Aldric would have answers, or the shape of answers, and Fen Cas had spent thirty years stud
