The air in the chapel didn't warm with the rising sun; it stayed stagnant, held in a pressurized stasis by the sheer weight of the data now anchored in Seraphina’s mind. She didn't move. She stood by the altar, her hands at her sides, watching the dust motes dance in the shafts of light like fragmented code.
Alessandro stayed where he was, twenty feet away, his back against the cold concrete wall. He didn't reach for his weapon. He didn't move toward her. He watched her with the wary, calculated stillness of a predator encountering a new kind of apex.
"Sera?" he asked again, his voice a jagged rasp in the silence. "Talk to me. Tell me you’re still in there."
Seraphina turned her head. The movement was too fluid, too precise. She looked at him, and for a terrifying second, she didn't see
