Liam listened to everything without interrupting, but the more Charlotte explained, the heavier his thoughts became. Being unconscious for a day and a half was not a small thing. In a hostile realm like Nalim, it was practically a death sentence.
If Charlotte had not found him, if she had decided to run like she had originally planned, if she had valued only her own safety in that moment and left him behind, Liam had no real guarantee he would have survived. Even with the academy watching, he could not place faith in Forced Extraction anymore, not after Charlotte had nearly been killed by the Berserker and no extraction had occurred. That meant his survival had depended on something outside his own control, and the thought irritated him deeply.
