The woman hovered, eyes fixed on Lucien.
For all her composure, he caught the smallest tremor beneath it.
Disbelief.
"You…" she said carefully. "What did you do to me?"
Her hands swept over her arms, her ribs, her throat, as if expecting to find missing pieces.
When she found nothing wrong, her breath escaped in a shaky exhale that tried to pretend it had always been steady.
Lucien kept his hands visible.
He did not approach.
He treated her like a drawn sword, because that was what she was.
"There is no time to talk," Lucien said. "People are coming."
The air tightened at the edge of his senses.
Several presences are coming.
Fast and focused.
Lucien's split bodies snap back toward him like beads pulled by a string.
They arrived in flashes, leaping into his chest and merging cleanly. Their experiences collapsed into his mind in one layered instant.
The formation discs they carried were auto-collected.
The woman's gaze darted, searching the sky.
