Her gaze flicked up, pinning him. "You felt it, didn't you? When you were down there."
He didn't answer immediately. "…You were watching?"
"Every room in this building has a feed." She folded her arms. "It responded to you, Everhart. It pulsed when you stepped near it. We ran diagnostics all night trying to replicate that interaction, nothing. Not with anyone else."
Merlin's heart beat once, twice, slower than before. "And what are you implying?"
"That Kael will want to exploit it," she said bluntly. "And that you, willingly or not, might become his key."
Her words hung between them, cold and heavy.
Merlin's mind ran through the implications. In the novel, the world he'd read and now lived, Invoke had never created something called the Lazarus Directive. It hadn't existed. Meaning this was new. Something branching from his presence.
He hid that thought behind calm eyes. "You think I should vote against the project."
