Monday began with the sound of someone taking apart a console.
Tal had come back at eight with Suri, as planned, to collect what the tertiary position still held. Nia pinned her last map to the wall, looked at it for a moment, and took it down again. Aiden turned the one working terminal to the Assembly channel.
A long chamber of tiered benches filled the screen, a clerk's table at its center, and above it the seal he had last seen on a card in Solt's hand. One chair at the Department's table was empty, with a placard that read *DIRECTOR*.
Aiden had not seen his father since a transit hub on Wednesday night. Nobody had.
"Is he coming?" Sela asked from the window.
"No."
Aiden had expected to feel something large. What he felt, watching the empty chair, was older and smaller: the ordinary grief of a son for a father who had never once been in the room.
* * *
