Two weeks after Pyrros, the skyline of Avalon looked exactly the same as it always had.
From my office at the top of the Ouroboros tower I could see the whole capital laid out below: the spires and the maglev lines, the holographic boards painting the evening sky in slow ribbons of colour, the river catching the last of the light. Somewhere among those towers was Ferraclysm's old headquarters, which as of last Tuesday had a new sign over its door.
The integration was going well. Better than I'd planned, which made me suspicious of it. Manufacturing plants in every province of the Empire, laboratories full of very clever people who had spent their lives building weapons and were cautiously curious about building something else, contracts that would keep money flowing for a decade. Elias was buried in paperwork and seemed happier than I'd ever seen him. Rose had spent a week inside the old Ferraclysm building and come back with forty pages of notes and a new favourite engineer.
