The air onboard the ship felt heavier after Virel.
It wasn't fear, exactly. Not anger, either.
Just weight.
Like every word had to fight through atmosphere before being spoken.
Julia sat alone near the secondary nav console, one hand curled around a mug of something warm that Alvin swore was safe. She hadn't said much since the drones disintegrated.
The only sound was the gentle hum of the ship's systems—and the not-so-gentle sound of Cassian's voice coming from the upper deck.
"I don't care if the calibration drifted two microns, Alvin, the waveform is clean. The signal didn't fracture—it split. That's a networked response, not static."
Alvin groaned from the floor, buried under cables. "Yeah, because what we need now is psychic WiFi."
Cassian ignored him and called over the railing. "Julia."
She looked up.
"You said the drones were calibrating you."
She nodded slowly.
"I think they were calibrating something through you," he said. "Not to you."
