Sera came into the penthouse a minute later.
Alexei didn't move. He let his eyes slit, just enough to see the set of her mouth and the way her shoulders had loosened like a tight knot finally undone.
She slid past him, heading toward her own room, her muscles relaxed in a way that he hadn't seen in her before.
When he heard the soft click of her door being shut, he finally closed his eyes. But he did not sleep.
He kept counting.
It was a habit built into him long before walls and generators and green things you keep in a room. He counted the breaths of everyone in the room because he could, because it was useful, because it told him if anything changed.
Zubair's never changed. Elias twitched once and made the small sound of a man whose dream had snagged on something sharp and then let go. Lachlan turned and told the floor a joke in his sleep that made no sense even to him.
