Voss agreed to a meeting within a day of Victor's message demanding one, though the location she chose this time carried none of the careful, controlled staging from their previous encounters, a simple café in a busy district where the ordinary bustle of daily life felt jarringly disconnected from everything Victor had witnessed the previous night.
She looked different when he arrived, the composed authority from their earlier meetings replaced by something considerably more strained, dark circles beneath her eyes suggesting she hadn't slept properly in longer than a single night's crisis would explain.
"You found the southern facility," she said, without preamble, before Victor had even fully settled into the seat across from her.
"We did." Victor kept his voice carefully controlled despite the anger still simmering beneath the surface. "Seven subjects. Six survived. One didn't."
