Luke knew it halfway through his explanation.
It wasn't in their faces at first—everyone was attentive, eyes forward, nodding at the right moments. But there was a certain hollowness to it, a rhythm too polite. The kind of agreement people give when they want to understand, yet the meaning keeps slipping through their fingers.
He stopped mid-sentence.
"…and that's why the angle matters," Luke said, tapping the parchment where he had drawn a rough triangle, lines intersecting at odd points. "If the reading is off even a little, your distance calculation—"
Silence.
A few blinks. A few exchanged glances.
Naeva leaned forward slightly, brows drawn together, studying the sketch as if it might suddenly explain itself if she stared long enough. One of the researchers scratched his head. Another slowly turned the parchment sideways, as if orientation alone might fix the problem.
Luke exhaled through his nose.
Right. Of course.
