In the main hall, Mikali stood frozen in front of the readout screens, watching numbers he couldn't quite believe, his hand hovering uselessly over the console as though touching it might somehow reverse whatever was happening. Everything had been going exactly as expected — the sync optimization curve climbing clean and steady, every metric falling precisely where the projections said it should, reaching a full one hundred percent without a single irregularity along the way. It had been, up to that point, the cleanest sync attempt anyone in the room had ever witnessed. Then, in a single instant, the readings collapsed, and the sync graph collapsed right along with them, dropping to nothing in the space of a heartbeat, as though someone had simply reached out and severed the connection by hand.
"What's going on, Director?" Alan demanded, already crossing the hall toward him, his voice sharp enough to cut through the low murmur that had broken out among the surrounding technicians.
Mikali stood there a moment longer, still staring at the screen as though it might correct itself if he simply waited long enough, the way a man stares at a wound before admitting how bad it actually is. When he finally turned to face Alan, his expression had gone pale, all the earlier confidence drained clean out of it. "It looks like the link between the core and the pilot has simply vanished. The system no longer recognizes the Duke's artifact at all — as far as Altopereh is concerned, right now, there's no pilot in that cockpit."
Alan's gaze snapped toward the gallery, shock breaking through his usual composure for the first time since Youri had been brought to Batuzane, his earlier calm replaced by something closer to alarm. "What did he do?"
"I don't think that's quite what happened," Adin cut in, his eyes still fixed on the cockpit below, unmoving, his tone carrying the flat certainty of a man who'd already run the numbers twice in his head before opening his mouth. "It looks more like Altopereh rejected him."
A silence followed that observation, brief but heavy. Alan turned sharply toward Leonora. "Get him out of there. I want an explanation for all of this, and I want it now," Alan said, sharply.
But before she could take a single step toward the door, Altopereh's cockpit hissed open on its own, revealing Youri slumped forward in the seat. In that same instant, the guards who'd been waiting for the next elevator ride arrived at the gallery entrance. Alan spotted them immediately and raised his voice.
"Get him out of there and take him straight to the Central Building. I want him there as soon as physically possible — I will have my explanation, one way or another." His voice carried across the gallery, sharp enough that even the technicians farthest from him fell silent to listen. Whatever composure he'd walked in with had thinned considerably in the last few minutes, and it showed in the way his hand had curled, unconsciously, into a fist at his side.
The soldiers moved fast, closing in around the gallery and pulling Youri from the cockpit before he'd fully come back to himself, his legs still unsteady beneath him as they hauled him upright. They marched him toward the elevator, and as they waited for it to arrive, Adin fell into step just close enough to be heard, his voice pitched low enough that it seemed meant only for Youri.
"I take it you got your wish granted, then."
Youri glanced at him, a faint, humorless chuckle escaping him, more breath than sound, the kind of laugh that had long since stopped meaning anything close to amusement. "I guess I did."
The exchange didn't last any longer than that — the soldiers shoved him forward into the elevator before either of them could say anything more, and the doors closed on whatever else might have passed between them, sealing Adin's expression somewhere between curiosity and something closer to pity, an expression he'd likely never admit to wearing if anyone asked him about it later. By the time they reached the surface of the Prime Lab, Youri's next destination had already been decided for him, and it was nowhere near Batuzane. The Central Building sat on the Carcas continent, the seat of the empire itself, the place every road in Terrian space eventually led back to one way or another, whether by choice or by force.
Leonora was already waiting outside when the soldiers emerged with Youri in tow, her posture rigid, arms folded behind her back in a stance that gave away nothing of what she was actually feeling. She looked over the group with a cold, assessing eye before speaking.
"We'll be taking the royal cabin to the capital," she said, her tone leaving no room for discussion, each word clipped and final. "Make sure the immobility suit is fully functional before we leave — I don't want a single incident anywhere along the way, is that understood?"
"Yes, ma'am," the soldiers answered, nearly in unison, snapping to attention as they moved to carry out the order without hesitation, boots striking the floor in one clean motion.
She watched them work for a moment, her expression unreadable even to the men closest to her, before turning her gaze toward the horizon in the direction of Carcas — toward whatever waited for both of them once they finally arrived, and toward a conversation she suspected neither of them was going to enjoy having. Behind her, Youri stood motionless between two guards, his eyes fixed on some point in the distance that none of the soldiers could have named even if they'd asked him. Whatever had happened inside that cockpit, whatever Altopereh had shown him in the moments before the connection failed, he hadn't spoken a single word of it since. Leonora had noticed that silence the instant she'd seen his face again, and something about it worried her far more than the failed sync itself ever could.