Elizabeth didn't respond to that. She couldn't.
The silence that followed wasn't empty; it was heavy, saturated with the unspoken implications of Rex's cold pragmatism. He didn't push her to answer, either.
He didn't need to. They reached the laboratory in a comfortable, practiced silence, the kind of silence shared by two people who had long since moved past the need for moral posturing.
The moment the heavy reinforced door hissed shut behind them, the atmosphere shifted violently. The philosophical weight of the hallway evaporated, replaced by the sterile, sharp intensity of technical obsession.
The Key sat at the dead center of Elizabeth's workspace, a grotesque masterpiece of arcane engineering. It was suspended within a containment lattice of her own design, its surface a shifting, hypnotic weave of grimoire-inscribed metal.
