For a few seconds, nobody in the entry room said anything.
Their bodies were fine. The Tower had closed every wound on the way out, and there was not a mark left on any of them to show what Floor 15 had cost. That was the part that did not feel like winning.
James's throat was whole. He could breathe without trouble. He still remembered her hand closing around it.
Finn stood near the gear racks with his jaw set, looking at nothing. Ronan opened and closed his fingers slowly, like his body kept bracing for a pain that was not coming back. Cillian turned his restored arm over once, looked at the unmarked skin, then looked away from it. Maeve sat in the chair with the Apostle's Radiant Circlet in her lap, and she touched it once with two fingers and said nothing.
Then every phone in the room started buzzing at the same time.
It was not one alert after another. It was all of them at once, a wall of vibration off the bench and out of pockets, and it did not stop.
