A female voice emerged from his wristwatch.
"Was all of this necessary?"
Gia's question hung in the air, accusatory despite the neutral tone she tried to maintain.
"You knew about the presence of this soul fragment and that cube from the very start. You could have prevented everything. Thousands of innocent lives wouldn't have been lost. Eleanor would still be alive. Those children wouldn't be trapped in a hostile dimension."
The Chairman's lips twitched slightly – not quite a smile, but acknowledgment that Gia was right.
Indeed.
The Chairman had known from the very moment Eleanor brought that cube to the Capitol.
There were very few things that could remain secret from him within the boundaries of humanity's capital city.
The soul fragment had been confident it would eventually be discovered – such entities always were – but when days passed without action, when the Chairman seemed oblivious to its presence, it had grown arrogant.
