Kelly POV
The council chamber looked different in daylight. Less like a courtroom, more like what it actually was: a room full of frightened, powerful people trying to remember how to govern what they no longer fully understood.
"Miss Kael." Hale stood as I entered, which he hadn't bothered to do in three weeks. "Thank you for joining us."
"You say that like I had somewhere better to be."
"I imagine you did, actually, given the circumstances."
I took my seat without responding. The chamber's glass walls curved out over the city.
Beyond them, cranes were already working the edges of the Blind Zone's collapsed footprint, the slow, unglamorous work of a metropolis stitching itself back together.
"I'll speak plainly," Hale said, and his voice had shifted since the last time we'd sat in this room—less certainty, more caution. "The council has reviewed the footage from three days ago. Extensively."
"I imagine you have. It's been playing on every network since."
