That night, Aaron lay on the plush mattress in his quarters, staring at the metal ceiling, and made a decision he probably should have made the moment Ariana first mentioned "tomorrow, we push the dose slightly higher."
He wasn't doing tomorrow.
Not because the data wasn't useful — he could admit, grudgingly, that everything Ariana had shown him today had been genuinely informative, the kind of information he might never have gotten on his own. But useful and worth staying for weren't the same thing, and he'd agreed to come here under duress, not under any actual obligation to stay indefinitely while his sister worked through an open-ended research itinerary. Eva and Claire were back at the inn, presumably managing without him, presumably fine, but presumably wasn't a word he wanted sitting between himself and the people he loved for any longer than necessary.
