The emergency council meeting felt like a funeral where nobody could agree on who had died.
I sat at the far end of the Silver Creek conference table, still weak from yesterday's power crash but functional enough to endure what was probably going to be several hours of political theater. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see Alphas and their entourages arriving like storm clouds gathering before a hurricane—black SUVs with tinted windows, security details that moved like military units, the kind of territorial posturing that usually preceded either alliance or bloodshed.
"Seventeen facilities," Alpha Thomas from Cascade was saying, his weathered hands spread flat on the polished wood. "Seventeen fucking research installations where they've been torturing our people for years, and none of us knew."
