The Zodiac Briefing Room had no clocks.Only countdowns.
Buried beneath the Hero Academy's administrative spire — ten levels down, where signal dampers bent even sound into submission — the room resembled the inside of a sealed reactor. Everything was deliberate: matte black steel, obsidian veins that pulsed faintly with biometric resonance, and the stifling air of unrecorded decisions.
At the center stood the Adjudicator's Table. A flawless ring of obsidian-glass, pressure-reactive, coded to ten genetic signatures.
Tonight, only four chairs were filled in person. The remaining six flickered with encrypted holo-feeds. Distorted silhouettes. Filtered voices. No identifiers. Only presences.
Zodiac Gemini leaned forward, both holograms glitching slightly out of sync, like a soul trying to separate from itself.
"This isn't about what he did. It's about what he is."
