Tank said, "How long until it hatches?"
The chamber received the question in its characteristic way—the bioluminescent pools shifting, the ceiling breathing, the cold in the walls doing the thing it had been doing since the Harvester withdrew where it sat at a temperature that wasn't quite threatening and wasn't quite not threatening, occupying the specific register of 'I am still here and I want you to know that I am still here' with the patience of something that had been practicing this particular form of communication for decades.
"Unknown," Marcus said. "The process isn't predictable. Hours. Possibly days. As I said it depends on certain conditions."
"What conditions?" Seris asked. Her voice had the quality it got when she was building a picture—precise, targeted, pulling information in the order that would let her construct something useful from it.
