The corridor rang with too many voices and not enough answers.
"Elena—orders?" someone shouted over the commotion.
She stood at the center of the ruined transit hub, smoke curling along the ceiling like a living thing, her ears ringing from the last detonation. For one suspended heartbeat, the world narrowed to the absence that burned behind her ribs.
Adrian was gone.
Not dead, she refused that word, but gone in the way that mattered most: no psychic echo, no residual imprint, no pull at the bond that had become as familiar to her as breathing. It was as if a hand had reached into the architecture of reality and cleanly removed him.
Panic tried to claw its way up her throat, but she swallowed it.
"Listen to me," Elena said, projecting calm into her voice and into the psychic field at the same time. The words carried farther than sound should allow, rippling through the minds of the operatives who had frozen in uncertainty. "No one is allowed to fall apart, especially not now."
