“It’s not for comfort.” Elias dragged a hand over his mouth. His skin felt cold, though the room was warm. “The full-scale machine was there. Finished enough to run. Not finished enough to defend itself from scrutiny.”

The memory took him cleanly then, not as a choice but as a drop.

The hidden lab smelled of hot dust, machine oil, and old concrete. It sat under the townhouse like a secret shame: a long service bay cut from an older freight chamber, one wall still showing the rough marks of an older building phase, the rest crowded with shielding racks, power trunks, cooling lines, and stacked cases of parts he had promised himself he would sort when there was time. In the center, behind a half-ring of protective rail and suspended coil housings, the machine waited on its platform.

Even to Elias, who had built it, it looked like proof against common sense.

The chair sat at the core on a gimbaled base, enclosed by a ring assembly thick with conductor veins and position arms. Around it rose shielding coils in nested arcs, some clean and finished, some still carrying temporary braces and exposed maintenance tags. Safety housings covered two-thirds of the power feed. The last section still showed raw access panels where a proper casing should have been. Genius and compromise stood there welded together, and he had loved it enough to forgive the parts that should have stopped him.