The captain had no answer. The question hung in the air like a guillotine blade suspended by a single fraying thread.
Around him, the silence was absolutely not a supportive silence but a hollow, shameful one. No lieutenant stepped forward to bolster his courage; no sergeant offered a tactical counterargument.
The authority he had spent decades cultivating evaporated in an instant, leaving behind only a frightened man in expensive armor.
After a long, humiliating silence that seemed to stretch into eternity, the captain lowered his head, his shoulders slumping, and retreated into the ranks.
He did not speak again. He simply became another frightened ghost in a corridor full of them.
Standing on the periphery of Valentina's crumbling forces, Elizabeth Von Starlight watched the carnage unfold with an expression carefully sculpted into one of shock and visceral horror.
