Atheon had not slept.
Not for thirty hours.
Not since the alarms began shrieking through the cracked corridors of Grim Hollow. Not since the food storage chamber vomited smoke and the stench of chemical accelerants. Not since the bodies, the wounded, the terrified civilians, and the swearing soldiers filled the walkways like a single organism made of panic.
But it wasn't exhaustion twisting his jaw as he strode into the command chamber.
It was disgust.
The moment he pushed open the reinforced door; metal screeching off its rusted hinges—the room went silent. Half a dozen administrative officers sat around the long table. They hadn't earned their posts; neither through strength nor wit. They were propped up by noble bloodlines, paraded into authority as if the military were nothing more than a stage for aristocratic pageantry.
Pencil pushers, they truly were at least most of them.
People who believed the shield of procedure made them safe from reality.
