Three weeks had passed since Gabriel took the rifle round in the vest gap. The fragments were out. The lung had held. He was off the active field roster — light duties only, Vincent's order, non-negotiable — but he'd moved back into the war room two days ago, and the chair that had been empty long enough to start feeling like a monument was now just a chair again. Nobody said anything when he walked in that first morning. They didn't need to.
Raven noticed the shift when she collected the recon brief before dusk. The room had a different weight to it. Steadier.
