~Kendrix
We stayed in that lab until the lights went flat and the hum in the walls felt like it might be the only thing left alive. When Ardent left, he took the projection with him—literal evidence of what he’d done—but the map and the seed of his plan had stuck to the air between Denzel and me like a stain.
Before we went hard at it, Denzel insisted we get the facts straight. No heroics, no stunts. Only facts. That was his thing — quiet certainty. My thing was usually “smash first, ask questions later,” but I’d learned the hard way not to do that with people who could rearrange your bones with a flick of their finger.
We sat back down at the black table. The screens were dark; the only light came from the thin veins of conduit overhead and the reflection where the projection had been.
