Chapter 193: Strategic Counseling Begins
Professor Malcris chose a room with two chairs and no table.
The missing table was not a detail.
It was an argument.
Malcris had removed the easiest object to distrust. No polished surface for documents. No safe place for hands. No barrier to make silence look procedural instead of personal. Two chairs meant invitation. Three paces meant measurement. One sealed window meant the room had already decided where escape should not exist.
Counseling began before anyone spoke.
That was the first manipulation.
Tables created boundaries. Documents. Objects to look at when silence became too sharp. A table allowed a person to place evidence between himself and the man smiling like concern had been invented for him.
No table meant only distance.
Three paces of it.
Measured.
I entered with Veylan behind me, Seraphina at my right, Ren with the Support Witness log, and Valeria carrying a contract mirror she had named "anti-nonsense glass."
