Chapter 24: The Architecture of Ruins

Voss surrendered his equipment with the same unhurried precision he had used to catalog everything else. He handed over three external drives, a leather portfolio, and a slim aluminum case containing what he described, in perfectly modulated English, as backup sequence data. He did not resist. He did not bargain. He stood in the forward compartment of the submarine as Tony's overwatch signal confirmed the extraction team was thirty seconds out, and he looked at Viktor with the detached, evaluative attention of a man appraising a prototype he had not quite finished studying.

"You will be examined," Voss said. Not a threat. An observation, rendered in the register of a scientist noting the next experimental step. "By tribunals, by institutions, by the people you have chosen to align yourself with. They will all want to understand what you are."

Viktor was looking at the drives on the table rather than at Voss. "I am aware."