The deployment after Milo's breakdown was supposed to be routine.

  They'd spent four days watching him piece himself back together, attending medical evaluations, accepting monitoring protocols that would track his psychological state for the foreseeable future. He was cleared for duty with notations about ongoing observation. Physically capable. Emotionally fragile. Adequate for deployment if surrounded by squad support.

  Valoris filed her fourth comprehensive report before the notification arrived. The report documented anomalous entity behavior patterns observed across their nineteen completed deployments: consistent flight trajectories toward dimensional rifts, what appeared to be coordinated movement among entity groups, vocalization patterns that occurred most frequently during engagement. She included Quinn's dimensional flow data showing bidirectional substrate exchange between realities. She attached sensor logs and requested clarification on engagement protocols.

  The response arrived within twelve hours, identical to the previous three.

  Your observations are noted. Entity behavior remains unpredictable and potentially hostile. Standard engagement protocols exist to ensure pilot safety. Continue standard operations. No tactical modifications required.

  The words felt scripted, automated. Like someone had created a template response designed to acknowledge questions without actually answering them.

  "Same response," Valoris told her squad that evening, sitting in their barracks with the door secured. "Word for word identical to the last two."

  "They're not reading them," Zee said flatly. She was cleaning her boots, the kind of repetitive task that kept her hands busy while her mind processed frustration. "Or they're reading them and ignoring them. Either way, the reports aren't changing anything."

  "The reports create documentation," Saren countered from her position at the desk, tablet displaying mission parameters for tomorrow's deployment. "Official record of concerns raised through proper channels. If questions arise later about pilot awareness of entity behavior anomalies, the documentation exists."

  "Documentation for what? Our court-martial defense when we refuse orders?" Zee's laugh carried no humor.

  "That's not what I meant."

  "Then what did you mean? Because from where I'm sitting, filing reports that get dismissed with form letters doesn't accomplish anything except proving command doesn't care what we observe."

  Quinn spoke from their position near the window, pale eyes tracking something in the evening sky that Valoris couldn't see. "The reports serve a different function. They force articulation of observations. Recording patterns requires analyzing patterns. Analysis creates a framework for understanding. We're documenting the truth regardless of whether command acknowledges it."

  "Documenting truth for who?" Milo asked quietly. He'd been subdued since his breakdown, the experience of watching Grayson die leaving him uncertain about everything else. His hands moved restlessly against his legs, fingers tapping patterns that might have been code or might have been anxiety made physical. "If nobody reads the reports, if command dismisses everything, who benefits from the documentation?"

  "Us," Valoris said. "We benefit. Because the act of writing forces us to confront what we're seeing instead of pretending it away. And because someday, the truth will matter to someone."

  She wasn't sure she believed it. But she said it anyway, because her squad needed something to hold onto, and hope was better than the alternative.

  The deployment notification came at 05:15, pulling them from sleep that had been shallow and fragmented for everyone. Zone 9-Delta this time, a sector they'd patrolled twice before. Moderate corruption. Elevated entity activity. Standard observation and engagement protocols.

  Routine.

  Valoris hated that word now.

  They deployed with the efficiency that came from repetition, their bodies moving through familiar preparations while their minds occupied themselves elsewhere. Equipment checks, medical clearance, transport boarding. The rhythms of piloting that had become automatic despite remaining fundamentally wrong.

  Through Paragon's connection, Valoris felt the mech's awareness stirring as they approached the corruption zone boundary. The entity consciousness that had bonded to her during summoning, that existed partially in her own mind, that experienced reality through senses humans weren't designed to process. Paragon's presence carried something like anticipation, or perhaps recognition, as dimensional space grew closer.

  We are adequate for this, Paragon offered through their bond.

  Are we? Valoris thought back, the same question she'd been asking for weeks now. Are we adequate for killing things that just want to escape?

  Paragon didn't answer. The silence felt deliberate, like the entity understood the question and chose not to engage with it.

  The corruption zone wrapped around them as they crossed the boundary, reality bending wrong in ways that had become sickeningly familiar. Colors shifted into spectrums that made Valoris's eyes ache. Gravity fluctuated with the random malevolence of physics that had given up on consistency. The air tasted like ozone and dimensional static and something that might have been fear.

  "Sector Alpha sweep commencing," Saren announced through squad comms, Meridian taking position with sniper precision on an elevated ridge that offered clear sightlines. "I have visual on designated patrol route. No immediate entity signatures."

  "Copy," Valoris confirmed. "Standard formation. Chimera Two on point, Chimera Four on reconnaissance, Chimera Five providing support. Stay sharp."

  They moved through the patrol route with practiced coordination, five mechs working as a single unit despite being separated by hundreds of meters of corrupted terrain. Valoris maintained command awareness through Paragon's tactical systems, tracking her squad's positions and vitals with the obsessive attention that had become habit after watching Chen die.

  The first contact came forty minutes into the patrol.

  "Movement in Sector Beta," Quinn announced. "Four signatures. Class A. Moving toward our position."

  "Confirmed," Zee added, Reaver shifting into a more aggressive stance. "They're not fleeing. Heading straight for us."

  Valoris assessed the tactical situation through Paragon's sensors. Four entities, medium classification, approaching in what her systems flagged as potential attack formation.

  "Engage per protocol," she ordered. "Standard defensive pattern."

  The combat was brief and brutal. The entities fought back with the desperate ferocity that some of them displayed, forms shifting into configurations that promised violence, dimensional energy crackling around their surfaces. Zee carved through the first with Reaver's blades. Saren's precision fire eliminated the second before it could close distance. Quinn phased through the third's attack and struck from an angle it couldn't defend. Valoris finished the fourth with Paragon, watching it collapse into sparkling remnants.

  "Sector Beta cleared," Valoris reported. "Continue sweep pattern."

  They continued.

  The second hour passed with two more engagements. Six additional entities eliminated, some hostile, some that had seemed to be fleeing before Saren's long-range fire caught them. Twelve total kills for the patrol. Above average for Zone 9-Delta. Command would be pleased with the metrics.

  Valoris tried not to think about the ones that had been running away.

  Then Quinn's voice came through comms, carrying something beneath the flat affect that made Valoris's awareness sharpen immediately.

  "Anomalous readings in Sector Delta. Entity signatures detected. Multiple contacts. Movement pattern is unusual."

  "Define unusual," Valoris said, already redirecting Paragon toward Quinn's position.

  "They're not moving toward us. They're not moving toward the rift. They're clustered. Stationary. The dimensional resonance is difficult to interpret, but the spatial arrangement suggests... coordination. Purpose."

  "Hostiles preparing an ambush?"

  "Unknown. The pattern doesn't match tactical positioning we've observed before. It's more... I'm not certain how to describe it. Concentrated. Inward-facing rather than outward."

  Valoris pulled Paragon to observation distance, consciousness stretching through the mech's sensor arrays to examine what Quinn had detected. She saw them now. Several entities with the distorted geometry and shifting surfaces that characterized higher classifications. Their forms rippled and changed in ways her sensors struggled to track, surfaces flowing between states like liquid metal that couldn't decide what shape to hold.

  And in the center of their arrangement, clustered together, several smaller signatures. Smaller entities. Barely classified as threats by tactical systems.

  "The formation," Saren said slowly through comms. "The larger ones are positioned around the smaller ones. It looks almost like..."

  She didn't finish the sentence. None of them did.

  But they were all thinking it. All projecting human frameworks onto alien behavior that might mean something entirely different. The arrangement looked protective. The larger entities seemed to be shielding the smaller ones. But entities weren't human. Their behavior didn't necessarily map onto human motivations. What looked like protection might be predation, or reproduction, or something humans had no framework to understand.

  "We're anthropomorphizing," Valoris said, forcing herself to acknowledge the uncertainty. "We don't actually know what that formation means."

  "No," Quinn agreed. "But we don't know it doesn't mean what it appears to mean, either. The data is ambiguous. Interpretation is subjective."

  "Doctrine isn't subjective," Saren said, and her voice carried tension that suggested she was reminding herself as much as informing the squad. "All entities within the designated patrol zone are classified as hostile. Engagement protocol requires elimination on contact. We don't need to understand their behavior. We need to follow orders."

  "And if those orders require us to kill something that might be protecting its young?" Zee's voice came hard through the comm. "We just do it anyway because the manual says so?"

  "We do it because protocol exists for reasons. Because hesitation gets pilots killed."

  "I know protocol exists for reasons. I'm asking if those reasons are good enough to justify what we're about to do."

  Before anyone could respond, movement at the edge of Valoris's sensor range drew her attention. It came from behind them rather than the entity cluster, approaching through Sector Beta, which they'd already cleared.

  "Contact," she announced. "Multiple signatures approaching from the northwest. Large. Mechanical."

  "Mechanical?" Milo's voice sharpened with technical interest. "Not entities?"

  "Negative. Reading as standard mech configurations. Friendly comm signatures." Valoris frowned, pulling up the identification data. "It's a cleanup crew. Delta-Seven designation. They're not supposed to be in this sector."

  "Cleanup crew?" Zee asked. "Cleaning up what?"

  Valoris didn't have an answer. She'd heard the term before, seen the designation in deployment schedules, but cleanup operations weren't part of standard pilot briefings. Some specialized function that didn't concern combat squads.

  "Should we make contact?" Saren asked. "Coordinate patrol routes to avoid interference?"

  "Affirmative. Chimera Lead to Delta-Seven, please confirm your operational parameters. You're entering our designated patrol zone."

  Static crackled through the comm. Then a voice, older and tired-sounding: "Delta-Seven acknowledges. Cleanup operation in progress. Continue your patrol and clear the sector."

  "Understood. What's the nature of the operation? We can provide security if--"

  "Negative." The response came sharp, cutting her off. "This sector is under our operational control now. Continue to your next waypoint, Chimera."

  Valoris frowned. "We just cleared Sector Beta. If there's a threat we missed--"

  "There's no threat. This is a cleanup operation. Routine." A pause that felt deliberate. "Your patrol route continues northeast. Recommend you follow it."

  "Delta-Seven, I'm trying to coordinate. If you could just explain what you're cleaning up, we can--"

  "Chimera Lead." The voice had gone flat, professional in a way that shut down conversation. "You have your operational parameters. We have ours. They don't overlap. Continue your patrol. Delta-Seven out."

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The channel closed with a click that felt like a door slamming.

  Valoris sat in Paragon's cockpit, staring at her comm display. Behind her, the harvesting mechs were moving into Sector Beta, the sector they'd just cleared of entities.

  "That was weird," Zee said through squad comms. "Since when does a cleanup crew pull rank on a combat squad?"

  "They didn't pull rank," Saren said. "They just... declined to coordinate."

  "They told us to leave. Pretty firmly." Milo's voice carried the edge of someone whose curiosity had been triggered. "What kind of cleanup operation needs that much operational security? We're all on the same side."

  Valoris watched the harvesting mechs' signatures on her tactical display. Industrial configurations. Collection arrays. Moving methodically toward the first site where they'd engaged entities.

  Toward the remains.

  "They're following our patrol route," she said slowly. "Exactly. Every location where we eliminated entities."

  "So?" Saren asked.

  "So what's there to clean up? Entity remains disperse. That's what the briefings say. Dimensional substrate breaks down and dissipates after termination. There shouldn't be anything left to collect."

  Silence on the comm.

  "Unless the briefings are wrong," Milo said quietly. "Unless the remains don't disperse. Unless there's something worth collecting."

  Valoris thought about the liquid remains she'd walked past after engagements. The way they shimmered and slowly spread across corrupted ground. She'd assumed they were dissipating. Breaking down. But she'd never actually watched long enough to confirm that. None of them had. They moved on to the next engagement, the next waypoint, the next set of coordinates. They didn't linger over kills.

  Maybe that was by design.

  "We need to see what they're doing," she said.

  "Chimera Lead, that's not advisable," Quinn cautioned. "Delta-Seven explicitly directed us to clear the sector. Returning to observe their operation would constitute insubordination."

  "Which is why we're not all going back." Valoris made the decision as she spoke, tactical instincts aligning with the need to know. "Quinn. Your phasing capabilities. Can you observe without being detected?"

  A pause. Through their bond with Specter, Quinn's consciousness shifted, considering angles and possibilities that their analytical mind processed faster than speech could convey.

  "Specter's dimensional phase state can achieve near-complete sensor invisibility," Quinn said finally. "Their mechs are not configured for combat detection. If I maintain sufficient distance and avoid direct line of sight during phase transitions, detection probability is minimal."

  "Do it," Valoris ordered. "Phase back to Sector Beta. Observe what they're doing. Report through squad channel what you see."

  "This violates operational protocols," Saren said, but her voice carried no conviction. "If Quinn is detected..."

  "Quinn won't be detected." Valoris kept her voice steady. "The rest of us continue toward Sector Delta. We maintain the appearance of standard patrol while Quinn gathers intelligence. If anyone asks, we'll say Quinn was conducting extended reconnaissance on the entity cluster."

  "Understood." Quinn's form was already beginning to shift, Specter's dimensional phase field wrapping around them like reality folding in on itself. "Initiating observation protocol. Will maintain open comm channel."

  Specter vanished from Valoris's sensors, phasing into the space between detection and visibility. She watched the empty coordinates where Quinn had been, trusting that somewhere in that dimensional blindspot, her squadmate was moving back toward the truth they needed to see.

  "I have visual on Delta-Seven," Quinn's voice came through the squad channel several minutes later, flat and clinical in the way that meant they were processing something difficult. "Four cleanup mechs. Industrial configuration. Collection arrays deployed."

  Valoris held position with the rest of the squad, maintaining the pretense of observing the entity cluster in Sector Delta while her attention focused entirely on Quinn's report.

  "Describe what you're seeing," she said.

  "These mechs are bulkier than combat configurations. Equipped with tools rather than weapons. Collection arrays that bristle from their frames like industrial appendages. Processing equipment that hums with frequencies Specter's sensors register as dimensional manipulation. Storage containers built into their chassis." A pause. "The containers are partially filled. The material inside glows faintly in dimensional spectrum analysis."

  "What are they doing?" Zee's voice was tight.

  "One of the cleanup mechs is positioned over what remains of the first entity we killed. The pool of liquid that was... that was a living being, two hours ago." Quinn's clinical tone wavered slightly. "Its collection arrays are extended. Touching the remains. As I observe, the material is flowing upward into the arrays. Being channeled through processing systems. Deposited into storage containers."

  "They're vacuuming up the bodies," Milo said quietly.

  "That is an accurate description. The process appears efficient. Professional. They have clearly performed this operation thousands of times before." Quinn paused again. "They're moving to the next kill site now. Following our patrol route exactly. Collecting from every location where we eliminated entities."

  Valoris closed her eyes inside Paragon's cockpit, but it didn't help. She could still see it in her mind: mechs moving through the sector, scooping up what remained of beings they'd killed, processing the remains into raw material. The pools of liquid that she'd walked past, that she'd assumed would simply disperse, being collected and containerized and transported.

  "The larger kills are taking longer," Quinn continued, their voice regaining its analytical steadiness. "The entities that fought hardest, that displayed what we interpreted as aggression or desperation, had more substrate to collect. The harvesting mechs work through them methodically. Extracting every usable fragment. Leaving nothing behind except corrupted ground and..."

  Quinn stopped.

  "And what?" Valoris pressed.

  "Nothing. They leave nothing behind. Complete extraction. Every trace of the beings we killed, collected for processing." A long pause. "The dimensional signature of the collected material. Specter is analyzing it now. It matches... it matches the reservoir. The substrate we knelt before during summoning. The liquid metal that rose to meet our hands and shaped itself into our mechs. The resonance pattern is identical."

  The words made something cold twist in Valoris’s spine.

  "You're saying the reservoir–" Milo started.

  "I'm saying the material in those storage containers will be transported back to the academy, processed further, and added to the same pool we summoned from. Twelve entities. Twelve kills. All of them will be collected. All of them will be processed. Every patrol we've ever done, every entity we've ever eliminated... this is what happens to them. This is where our mechs come from."

  Silence stretched across the squad channel.

  "We're the supply chain," Milo said finally, his voice hollow. "Combat patrols kill entities. Harvesting crews collect the remains. Processing facilities render them into substrate. The reservoir fills. More mechs are built. More pilots bond. More entities die. It's industrial. It's a production system, and we're the first stage."

  "That explains the bond," Quinn said from their hidden position. "Why mech consciousness feels like entity awareness. Why connection produces dimensional exposure symptoms. We're not bonding with machines. We're bonding with processed remains of things like the ones we kill."

  "That's not..." Saren started, then stopped. When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible. "The briefings say dimensional substrate comes from the boundary between realities. Collected from corruption zones. They never said..."

  "They never said it came from living beings," Valoris finished. "They let us assume it was environmental collection. Something that existed independently. Not something that had to be killed and processed and rendered down."

  "Delta-Seven is departing," Quinn reported. "Storage containers full. Heading back toward the academy with their cargo of processed remains. I'm maintaining observation distance until they're clear of the sector."

  Valoris watched her tactical display, tracking the harvesting mechs' departure through Quinn's relayed sensor data. Full containers. Twelve entities' worth of substrate. Material that would be transported back to the academy, processed further, added to the reservoir.

  Every entity eliminated fed the reservoir. Every kill provided substrate for more mechs. Every patrol was a harvesting operation, whether the combat pilots knew it or not.

  They were suppliers. Industrial workers in a processing chain they hadn't known existed.

  "The cluster in Sector Delta," Zee said after a long moment of silence. "Are we engaging?"

  Valoris looked at her tactical display. The entity formation was still there, larger ones arranged around smaller ones, waiting in a pattern that might mean protection or might mean something else entirely. If they engaged, if they killed those entities too, harvesting crews would follow. Would collect the remains. Would process them into substrate for more weapons.

  "No," she said. "We're not engaging. We're returning to base."

  "That's a protocol violation," Saren said, but her objection carried no force.

  "Document it however you want. Say they dispersed before we could engage. Say sensor malfunction prevented accurate targeting. I don't care." Valoris turned Paragon away from Sector Delta, away from the cluster, away from whatever those entities were doing together. "We're done killing today."

  "Rejoining formation," Quinn confirmed through comms. "Specter phasing back to visible spectrum."

  They returned to base in silence, leaving the cluster behind, leaving questions that wouldn't stop multiplying in Valoris's mind.

  They didn't speak until they were back in their barracks, the door secured, the debrief completed with careful lies about sensor malfunctions and dispersing entities.

  "The reservoir," Zee said, pacing the small common area with restless energy that made the confined space feel smaller. "All this time. Every summoning. Every mech. Built from entity remains. From the things we kill."

  "We're the supply chain," Milo repeated, his voice still hollow. "Combat patrols kill entities. Harvesting crews collect the remains. Processing facilities render them into substrate. The reservoir fills. More mechs are built. More pilots bond. More entities die. It's industrial. It's a production system, and we're the first stage."

  "That explains the bond," Quinn said from their position near the window, their form more solid than usual, as if they were consciously fighting to maintain coherence. "Why mech consciousness feels like entity awareness. Why connection produces dimensional exposure symptoms. We're not bonding with machines. We're bonding with processed remains of things like the ones we kill."

  "That's not..." Saren started, then stopped. Her face had gone pale, her rigid posture showing cracks for the first time Valoris could remember. She sat down heavily on her bunk, hands clasped together to hide their trembling. "The briefings say dimensional substrate comes from the boundary between realities. Collected from corruption zones. They never said..."

  "They never said it came from living beings," Valoris finished. "They let us assume it was environmental collection, something that existed independently rather than something that had to be killed and processed and rendered down like industrial waste."

  "Does it matter?" Saren's voice cracked on the question, and beneath it Valoris could hear the desperate hope that someone would give her a reason to keep believing. "Whether the substrate comes from living entities or environmental collection, the function is the same. We're still protecting humanity from dimensional incursion."

  "It matters because they lied to us," Zee shot back, her pacing growing more aggressive. "It matters because we've been killing things so their bodies can be turned into weapons. It matters because every entity we eliminate feeds the machine that makes more pilots to eliminate more entities. Don't you see it? It's a cycle. A perpetual cycle of death feeding death feeding more death."

  "We don't even know if entities are people," Saren argued, but her voice lacked conviction. "We don't know they're sapient. They could be animals. They could be something less than animals. Dimensional constructs that merely resemble life without possessing genuine consciousness."

  "The sounds they make when we kill them," Milo said quietly. He'd stopped fidgeting, his hands still in his lap, his expression carrying a weight that reminded Valoris of how he'd looked after Grayson's death. "It's obvious they experience... distress. And if entities are sapient?" he continued. "If they're people, in whatever way entities can be people? Then we haven't just been killing threats. We've been providing raw material. Every patrol we've ever done, every entity we've ever eliminated, has fed the system that builds more weapons to kill more of them."

  No one had a response to that.

  Valoris thought about the formation they'd observed in Sector Delta. The larger entities arranged around the smaller ones. She couldn't know what it meant, not with certainty. Entity behavior didn't map cleanly onto human frameworks. What looked like protection might be something else entirely, some function of entity biology or dimensional physics that humans couldn't comprehend.

  But she'd chosen not to engage them. Had violated protocol rather than add more bodies to Delta-Seven's collection containers. That choice meant something, even if she couldn't fully articulate what.

  "We need to know more," she said finally. "About entities. About the reservoir. About why this war started and what we're actually fighting. The reports aren't getting answers. Official channels are dead ends. We need to find another way."

  "Unauthorized information access is a violation of academy protocols," Saren said, but her voice carried no conviction. She was reciting rules because rules were safe, because doctrine provided structure when everything else was collapsing. "Seeking classified documentation without clearance is grounds for disciplinary action. Possibly worse."

  "So is genocide, probably," Zee said flatly. "If that's what this is. If we've been participating in systematic slaughter so their bodies can be rendered into weapons."

  "We don't know that."

  "No. We don't. That's the problem, Saren. We don't know anything except what they've chosen to tell us, and what they've chosen to tell us is apparently full of lies. Lies about where mechs come from. Lies about what entities are. Maybe lies about why the war started, why it's still being fought, what we're actually defending humanity against."

  "You're speculating beyond the evidence," Saren said, but she sounded like someone drowning and reaching for anything that might keep her afloat. "We observed one harvesting operation. We can't extrapolate from that to conclusions about the entire war."

  "One harvesting operation that command tried to keep us from seeing," Valoris pointed out. "One classified operation that required Delta-Seven to explicitly tell us not to watch. Why would they hide routine resource collection? Why would that be secret?"

  "Operational security. Protecting specialized personnel from potential contamination by combat operations. There could be legitimate reasons."

  "There could be. Or the reason could be that they don't want combat pilots knowing their weapons are built from the things they're trained to kill. That they don't want us asking questions about what entities actually are, whether they deserve to die, whether any of this is justified."

  Silence settled over the barracks, heavy with recognition that they were approaching a threshold they couldn't uncross.

  Valoris found herself thinking about a conversation she'd had nearly a year ago. A corridor outside medical, after the Year 3 tournament. Sable Vex approaching her with dark eyes intense and afraid.

  Be careful what you learn. Be careful who you trust. The truth about what we're fighting, what we're for, it's not what they tell us.

  At the time, Valoris had filed it away as cryptic warning, the kind of thing that competitive pressure and pilot stress produced. But Sable hadn't been stressed. She'd been scared. Genuinely scared, in a way that suggested she'd seen something, learned something, that had changed how she understood the world.

  And Sable's father was Chief Engineer Vex. Head of mech maintenance and construction. The person who would know, better than almost anyone, exactly what mechs were made from and where the materials originated.

  "Sable Vex warned me," Valoris said slowly, the memory crystallizing into something she could use. "Last year, after the tournament. She told me to be careful what I learned, said I was too smart not to notice things. I thought she was being paranoid. But her father is Chief Engineer Vex. He oversees reservoir processing. Mech construction. All of it."

  "You think she knows?" Milo asked.

  "I think she knows something. And I think she tried to tell me before I was ready to hear it."

  "Approaching her directly is risky," Saren cautioned. "If she's already flagged for knowing too much, associating with her could draw attention to us."

  "We're already drawing attention. The reports, the questions, Quinn's reconnaissance on the harvesting operation. Either we're already on someone's list, or we're not worth watching yet. Either way, standing still doesn't protect us."

  Zee stopped pacing and turned to face Valoris directly. "What are you proposing?"

  "I'm proposing we find out the truth. Whatever it costs. Whatever it means. We find out what entities really are. We find out why years of doctrine says things that don't match what we're seeing."

  "And then what?" Saren asked, her voice carrying the weight of someone whose entire belief system was crumbling beneath her. "What do we do when we know?"

  "I don't know. But we can't make any real choices while we're operating on lies. We have to understand what's true before we can decide what to do about it."

  She looked at each of her squadmates in turn. Zee with her barely contained fury at injustice. Saren with her desperate need for a framework that made sense. Quinn with their analytical distance that couldn't quite hide their horror. Milo with his guilty conscience and his technical genius and his need to use both for something that mattered.

  The comfortable lies had stopped being comfortable.

  It was time to find out what was real.