He turned his head and found Elias watching him. The medic didn't ask for orders out loud. He didn't need to.
"Hide it," Zubair told him. "All of it."
Elias nodded. "Already there."
"Me too," Lachlan added, and for once the grin slipped and the truth looked out. "Feels… coiled."
Alexei finally opened his eyes. Blue cut clean through the white glare and the glass and the space between. He smiled like a secret.
"Mine is whispering songs," he said lightly. "But it likes surprises. It will wait."
Good. If their creatures chose silence, they were already a unit again, even in different boxes.
He tracked time by the vent and the distant power draw. Twelve minutes. Twenty-four. Thirty-six.
On the second big pull, the guards returned with a cart. Stainless. Neat. Bottles. Needles in blister packs. Labels in block type. A small bin for sharps. A larger one for what passed as waste in rooms where men turned other men's insides into notes.
