That was the whole of it.
She nearly missed it.
'That's them talking,' she thought.
Mahir was in the last row. She'd known he was there without looking. When his turn came he walked to Cullens' station with his usual precise movement, sat, waited. The calibration completed. He came back and sat and put his hands on his knees in the same position as before.
But when he sat he exhaled — barely audible, measured, the kind of breath that had a specific and deliberate quality of release to it.
He'd been holding something since she'd started speaking.
She didn't look at him directly.
She filed it.
'''
The last one was Ken.
He'd managed the flow of the entire process — coordinating the sequence, communicating with Cullens' assistants, ensuring the movement of one hundred and twenty people through a single station happened without friction. Operational to the end.
He sat down in front of Cullens last.
The calibration took six minutes.
Elara came to stand nearby.
