The Infirmary never slept.
Even in the hours before dawn --when the rest of the city softened into quiet and Artemis dimmed its gallery lights --the medical wing remained awake. Machines hummed steadily. Monitors blinked with sterile indifference. The air carried the faint, sharp scent of antiseptic layered over something older.
Something that felt wrong.
Galathea Brooks sat in the chair beside Tansy's cot.
Galathea hadn't moved in twenty minutes.
She stayed hunched over, watching Tansy. She didn't even look away once.
Not because she couldn't, but because she chose not to.
The room was quieter now than it had been earlier. The frantic rush of conservators had slowed into a tense stillness.
Even the room hummed it's usual hum, in contracts to the panicked rhythms it had earlier.
Dr. Ibarra and the others had stepped out briefly to recalibrate equipment --to try again, as they kept saying. To search for other solutions, test out more theories.
