They found them both in a corridor that smelled of smoke and scorched plastic, where the emergency lights painted everyone in the sickly color of phosphor. The air moved in uneven breaths — heavy with the ozone of circuits gone dead and the metallic tang of a place that had almost been slain by its own intelligence.
Aaron lay on a makeshift cot against a cold wall, bandage around a small head wound, breath shallow but even. He’d done something monumental and small at once. Gabriel sat nearby, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around himself as if he could enclose the pieces into coherence. He was shaking in the way men shake when they have been unmade but not yet able to be remade.
Liam was steady, a taut presence whose face had worn every weather the situation had thrown at them. He scooped
