The corridor smelled like recycled air and something chemical underneath, the particular flatness of a space that had never been meant for people to move through quickly, only to maintain. Kael moved through it anyway, fast and deliberate, keeping his footsteps even against the metal flooring.
Sela was behind him.
Not close in the way of someone who needed to be told to stay close. Close in the way of someone who had spent years learning to read the geometry of spaces and the people moving through them, the particular attentiveness of someone whose survival had depended on that reading for a very long time. She adjusted her pace to his without being asked. She tracked the same corners he tracked.
He noticed.
