Rex met her gaze, and for a moment, the air between them felt electrically charged, thick with the unspoken.
Valentina's eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. She looked like a woman who had reached out to touch a solid wall only to find her hand passing through a veil, discovering a hollow, vibrating chamber beneath the surface.
Her telepathic designation had done what it was designed to do: it had pierced the "Rex" she thought she knew, catching a glimpse of a frequency beneath the performance. It wasn't a full revelation, not yet, but it was a jagged, terrifying fragment of a truth that sat in the silence between them, heavy and undeniable.
It was the weight of a question that had already begun to answer itself.
Rex didn't look away. Instead, he turned his head, his eyes tracing the wreckage of the Avatar.
