The control room slowly returned to a brittle silence after Bian's furious exit. Monitors blinked with data feeds, keys clicked softly under tense fingers, and low murmurs resumed between team leads. No one dared mention the outburst, but the heavy air lingered like smoke after a fire.
The central communication engineer, a young Farian officer named Rhaes, sat tucked into a half-shadowed booth along the wall. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, his slender fingers loosening slightly from the stiff curve they'd taken on the edge of his console.
Bian's wrath had passed like a storm, but the danger still hung overhead.
His eyes flicked subtly to the schematics on his personal panel—the last ghost signals of the internal sweep now fading from view. He tapped a few keys and closed out of the encrypted thread he had accessed during the search. No trace. Nothing left behind. Good.
