Rex turned his head to meet her gaze, his eyes shining as polished obsidian. There was no anger in his expression, only the flat, dangerous stillness of a predator who had just been given a new variable to calculate.
"I know what I am doing," he said.
The words weren't defensive; they were a statement of fact, delivered with the absolute certainty of a man who had already rehearsed his own death a thousand times.
"I know you do," Lustia countered smoothly, her voice unruffled. "But you need to understand something: this is the first time you have been operating with a deadline that is defined by someone else's timeline rather than your own."
"You are no longer the sole architect of this catastrophe."
Rex didn't flinch. He acknowledged the truth of it with a single, slow nod.
The reality of it settled in his gut like cold lead. He was used to being the storm, the unpredictable variable that crashed through systems.
