The heavy click of the reinforced chamber door sealing shut echoed like a gunshot in the sudden silence.
With Alexander, Mezos, and the Shadows gone, the cavernous room felt suffocatingly small.
It should not have.
Lab V was enormous, built around a chasm deep enough to swallow sound and light before throwing both back, distorted. The Vanguard turned below them with the vast, measured grace of something too large to belong to one person's hands, its turbine rings dragging raw red ether through containment, crushing it into blue, refining it into white, then sending it upward through the relay spine in clean, luminous currents.
And above it, the Gate pulsed. Every pulse vibrated faintly through the metal floor and into the soles of Liam's boots.
Liam did not move from the railing.
He kept his spine straight, arms folded tightly across his chest, staring out at the impossible arch rather than at the man stepping off the platform behind him.
Arik's footsteps were nearly silent.
