Mira and Ken had gone to his room to check on him.
They had knocked, waited, knocked again. Atlas had answered in the particular state of someone dragged back from sleep by external demand—half present, blinking, processing the question of where Jelo was with the slow machinery of someone whose brain hadn't fully reengaged yet. He had taken a stroll, Atlas said. He does that. They had stood in the corridor for a moment—Mira and Ken and the half-awake Atlas—and then by some unspoken agreement they had decided to go looking.
They found him on the bench.
Sitting in the gap between the lights with his legs extended and the can in his hand and his eyes on the sky, completely still in the way he was still when his body was present and his mind was somewhere else entirely. He didn't hear them coming. He didn't look up until Mira spoke.
"Hope all is well," she said.
