The warehouse was quiet.
It was the heavy, awkward quiet that comes after a near-death experience, a political tribunal, and the terrifying revelation that your leader might occasionally be possessed by the ghost of a god-dragon.
Just a typical Tuesday for Thanatos.
Michael sat on a stack of scavenged metal plates, watching Jax try to teach one of his googly-eyed drones how to play fetch with a deactivated grenade.
The drone, with a sad little whir, kept dropping it.
"No, no, Sparky," Jax said, his voice full of a patient, fatherly disappointment. "You have to *want* the grenade. You have to feel the grenade's inner desire to be thrown."
It had been a week since the meeting with the Guild Council.
A week of tense silence and unspoken questions.
He and Chloe hadn't spoken about what happened in that room. Not really.
She had just… intensified his training, her usual clinical focus now tinged with a new, sharp urgency.
