Her legs trembled, exhaustion and adrenaline threading through muscle and bone, but they held as she rose to her full height, the joints in her knees giving a soft, almost inaudible crack in the silence.
Her gaze moved across the men filling the room, slow and deliberate.
One by one.
She traced the hard lines of their jaws beneath their masks, the subtle bulges of concealed holsters beneath tailored jackets, the minute differences in posture, some with hands resting loosely at their sides, others clasped behind their backs in a display of controlled patience.
Discipline.
Training.
Habit.
She looked at them as if committing every detail to memory, as if this moment would demand recollection later, faces, stances, tells. As if she were weighing them, measuring the collective force standing before her.
Not a crowd.
A structure.
