The soft chime of the door's ether lock announced Mezos before he stepped into the room.
Arik did not look up from the terminal.
He was watching a real-time stream of Wrohan's power fluctuations, more specifically, the suspicious pulse radiating from the Eastern Districts, which the official royal monitors continued to misidentify as line noise.
Wrohan was very fond of misidentifying things that embarrassed it.
Mezos crossed the suite with the measured tread of a soldier who had spent the last hour submerged in the strange, vibrating reality of Lab V and come out sharper for it. He looked different than he had that morning. The haggard gray tint of ether starvation had vanished, replaced by crystalline clarity. His eyes were brighter. His posture smoother. The restless tension that had sat beneath his skin since they entered Wrohan had finally eased.
