Aaron didn't sleep well.
This was, all things considered, not entirely surprising. The mattress was genuinely excellent — soft in the right places, firm where it mattered, the kind of bed that under normal circumstances would have knocked him out within minutes. But his mind refused to cooperate with his body's clear preferences, circling instead around the image of Ariana's face when she'd leaned in close enough for him to see his own reflection doubled in her lenses.
You are going to want to hear what I found.
It wasn't a threat. It hadn't sounded like one, anyway. But it also hadn't sounded like good news, and Ariana's particular flavor of cheerfulness made it genuinely difficult to tell the difference between exciting discovery and mild biological catastrophe until she actually opened her mouth and clarified which one it was.
