The silence was awful. It wasn't disappointment he saw in their eyes. It was fear. Because if Marcus didn't know, then no one knew. The entire operation—the shipments, the legal filings, the server passwords, the unspoken truces between warring departments—rested on the wetware of one sick man in a rumpled shirt.

By noon, the dam broke.

And on the day he finally left Aethelburg, walking out with a box of desk plants and a clear head, no one called after him with a question. They just waved, and got back to work.

Marcus shrugged. "I just guide."