Alexander sighed. "You and Liam are so similar, yet so different."
Arik's gaze remained on the gate. "That sounds like the beginning of a complaint."
"It's an observation."
"Those are usually complaints with better posture."
Alexander ignored that.
Below them, the Vanguard kept crushing red into blue, blue into white, the turbine's rhythm steady and immense. Light moved across the bridge in pulses, catching on metal, glass, and the old sealed seam across the chamber.
"Liam is odd too," Alexander said.
That brought Arik's eyes back to him.
Alexander folded his arms. "Not in the way people in this city mean when they say it. They say odd when they mean inconvenient, badly trained, too sharp, or too alive in the wrong direction." He glanced once toward the machine. "I mean odd as in wrong for the rules he should follow."
Arik said nothing.
