---Professor Eiden's POV---
The hall was quiet in the way that only rooms full of dangerous people can be.
Not silent - there were sounds: The scratch of a pen, the slates whirring with countless private open folders, the clink of a glass being set down, the faint mechanical whirr coming from Voss's arms as he adjusted his grip on the table's edge. But underneath those sounds, beneath them, holding them together like mortar between bricks - tension. Nobody acknowledged it. Acknowledging it would mean admitting it existed, and admitting it existed would mean admitting that the twelve smartest people in the known world were, at this moment, afraid of the same thing.
I wasn't afraid, not exactly. But I understood the room. I always understand the room.
