"Begin!" Sherlock shouted.
The moment his voice cut through the air, Elon moved.
No windup. No tell. No wasted motion. Just a sharp, controlled exhale through his nose and a wide horizontal sweep of his right arm, smooth and practiced, like brushing something off a table he had cleared a thousand times before. The air answered immediately, peeling away from him in a concentrated band that crossed the distance between them faster than Atlas's eyes could properly track.
Atlas was already moving.
He had been watching Elon from the moment they stepped forward — not his face, not his hands, but his posture. The way he held himself said everything. Too still. Too composed. Not the stillness of someone calm but the stillness of something coiled, waiting for the exact right moment to release. So when the motion finally came, Atlas was already committing to the lean, already shifting his weight sideways into the step, already in motion before the gust arrived.
