The Artemis research wing did not resemble a gallery.
It resembled a war room.
Galathea Brooks noticed the difference immediately as the elevator doors slid open. The air here carried the quiet tension of people trying to solve problems before something catastrophic slipped out of containment.
Glass walls lined the corridor, each revealing separate laboratories filled with scanners, pigment analyzers, restoration tables, and machines whose functions Galathea couldn't begin to guess.
Every surface held fragments of art under study.
One corner had cracked fresco under ultraviolet light, another had medieval panel painting suspended inside a humidity chamber, to the other side, a small sculpture slowly rotating beneath a scanning rig.
It looked less like conservation and more like investigation.
As if Artemis was constantly trying to understand the things it collected before they understood Artemis first.
Cael Alexander walked beside her, moving quickly.
