What is wrong with him?
The thought had the specific, internal register of someone whose model of another person has just produced a prediction and has watched reality decline to match it. Before, he would have come rushing. The pattern had been established across the day's consecutive encounters — Lukas, when a threat materialized, engaged it. The pattern was clear enough that its sudden absence produced the specific, disorienting quality of a reliable thing becoming unreliable without explanation.
The distraction was small....
But small, in a fight against a Black Cloud Poison Mamba, was enough.
The tail came fast.
