That landed harder than if he had shouted. Dev sat back slowly. “You don’t know.”

Elias set the glass down before he dropped it. The base clicked against the table. “If you interrupt every third sentence, you will get fragments and decide from those. I need you to hear the whole shape of it.” He looked from one face to the next. “Not because I enjoy speeches. Because if I stop before the right point, none of you will understand what I did, what failed, or why I walked in here looking like this.”

Jonas stayed standing a moment longer, jaw tight, then pulled a chair closer instead of reaching for his comm. “Talk. But you eat.”

Elias tore off a piece of bread, more to satisfy Jonas than himself. It turned dry in his mouth. He swallowed with effort.

“I went down this afternoon,” he said. “After you all left. I had already sealed the house and cut outgoing alerts. If I’d told anyone, one of you would have stopped me, and if you had stopped me, I would still be guessing. I was done with guessing.”

Amara’s face changed by almost nothing. It was enough. Niall’s name did not need to be spoken to sit down in the room with them.

Elias kept going before anyone could put it there aloud.

Elias said, “The hidden lab is below the service level. You all suspected there was more hardware in the building than I showed you. Dev was right about that much.”

Dev gave him a flat look. “Comforting to score points this way.”