The hours between planning and execution passed with the strange elasticity of time before violence—minutes stretching into eternities, then compressing into nothing when you tried to grasp them. Eli sat with the schematics until the lines blurred, Helix Capital's facility becoming a geography he could navigate blindfolded: three above-ground floors of corporate respectability, two subterranean levels of something else entirely, and the third basement that existed only in Y's intercepted communications, space unmapped by any official record.
"He's there," Y had confirmed, his voice compressed through encryption into something metallic and distant. "Prometheus and the subject—Roman. Same signature, same location. But Boss, there's something else. The facility's drawing massive power, more than medical equipment would need. Like they're running servers. Or incubators."
"For what?"
