Chapter 193: Chapter 193: Probe

Dean groaned. “Of course there is.”

“We need time,” the scientist said. “The captured data from the probe is incomplete. It was taken during a live fight, under rapidly shifting output conditions, while both of you were injured and the monitored bond state was collapsing in real time. It is valuable, but it is not clean.” He paused. “To put it less delicately, we recorded brilliance in the middle of a catastrophe.”

Dean looked almost touched. “That is the nicest insult I’ve received today.”

“It was not intended as an insult.”

“That is what makes it art.”

Arion, who had remained unnervingly silent through the exchange, said, “How much time?”

The scientist considered. “To assess whether the probe captured anything structurally valid, it takes a few days. To determine whether it can produce even a weak analog under lab conditions, it will take longer. A week for first-stage modeling, perhaps two for anything I would trust enough to speak about without embarrassing myself.”

Dean’s eyes sharpened. “Only now you’re worried about embarrassment.”

The scientist looked at him flatly. “You have already taken care of mine in the room.”

Nero laughed again.

Sylvia’s mouth twitched despite herself.

Dean, offensively pleased with this turn, settled a fraction deeper into the pillows. “That seems fair.”

The scientist continued before anyone else could derail him. “And if the initial probe tests show nothing useful, we may need more.”

Arion, who had been unusually silent until now while the doctors worked through the damage Dean had left on him, finally spoke. “Not through another fight.” His golden eyes fixed on Dean, and that was worse than if he had looked anywhere else. There was no anger in it now. Just something heavier, colder, and far more difficult to dismiss. “He doesn’t fight anymore.”

The room went still.

Dean stared at him.

Then at the ceiling.

Then back at Arion, because apparently cracked ribs, a reset shoulder, and the deeply offensive realities of bond collapse still had not improved his survival instincts.

“That,” Dean said at last, voice rough from pain and the bruising at his throat, “sounds less like a medical recommendation and more like you’ve decided to become a monarchy in human form.”

“It is both,” Sylvia said immediately.

Nero leaned farther back in his chair, one ankle over the opposite knee, and looked delighted in the quiet, predatory way of someone watching a problem become structurally entertaining again. “No, this is better. Keep going.”

Dean turned his head slightly toward him and regretted the existence of vertebrae. “I hope your next physician uses a larger needle.”

The scientist, caught in the middle of a room that had abruptly stopped being about research and become something far more armed and personal, glanced once at Arion, once at Dean, and made the extremely intelligent decision to agree with the person least likely to let him leave alive if he chose badly.

“That would, in fact, be preferable,” he said. “From a data integrity standpoint.”

Dean looked at him in naked disbelief. “You’re agreeing with him because you want to leave the room faster.”

The scientist had the decency to hesitate.

“Yes,” he admitted.

Nero laughed.

One of the physicians coughed into his wrist to hide what was definitely the start of a smile.

Dean looked back at the scientist. “At least you’re honest.”

“I’m alive,” the scientist corrected. “There’s overlap.”

“He doesn’t fight anymore,” Arion repeated.

Dean’s brows came together. “That sentence has several problems.”

“Yes,” Arion said.

“You don’t get to decide that alone.”

“Yes,” Sylvia said, before Arion could answer, “he does, at least for the immediate future, because you are in an imperial hospital with cracked ribs, a bruised throat, a reset shoulder, and a proven ability to accidentally destabilize your own bond while bleeding on government property.”

Dean looked wounded in a way that had nothing to do with the rib. “You are making me sound difficult.”

“You are difficult.”

“I am injured.”

“You are both.”

Nero, without missing a beat, added, “And academically manipulative when cornered.”

Dean pointed weakly in his direction. “You are all deeply committed to slander.”

Arion’s gaze had not left him.

Dean felt it like weight.

Dean hated how much that certainty affected the room.

He hated more that part of him understood it.

The scientist, who clearly wanted to live to see the results of his own research, clutched the tablet to his chest and continued in a tone that suggested he was choosing each word with the care of a man defusing a device. “There are alternatives to combat exposure. Controlled proximity mapping. Passive output sampling. Probe-assisted gland simulations. Graduated contact intervals with automatic stop conditions. If additional data becomes necessary, there are ways to gather it without,” he paused, glancing once at Dean’s ribs, then at Arion’s throat, “without repeating the original method.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “You make it sound like the original method was aesthetically disappointing.”

“It was scientifically useful,” the scientist said carefully, “and operationally unacceptable.”

Nero made an appreciative sound. “That is a very polished way to say disaster.”

The scientist, bruised in pride and quite ready to surrender rhetoric in exchange for survival, nodded once. “Yes.”

Dean let his head sink back against the pillow for one second, then looked at Arion again. “You really mean that.”

Arion’s answer came without delay. “Yes.”

Dean inhaled, which was a mistake, and exhaled through it anyway. “You can’t ban me from fighting forever.”

“Everyone out,” Arion said.

The room moved on instinct.

Not because Arion had raised his voice, but because something in the way he said it made even trained adults remember, very suddenly, that there were forms of authority more dangerous than rank.

The physician opened his mouth as if to object, thought better of it when Arion had already swung his legs over the side of the bed, and snapped instead at the nearest assistant to gather the remaining instruments. Sylvia hesitated for half a second longer from the observation area doorway, worry written plainly across her face, but Nero touched her elbow and guided her back before she could turn that hesitation into an argument.

The scientist, pride still visibly limping after the last ten minutes, seemed almost grateful for the order. He quickly collected the case containing the pheromone probe, muttered something to the physicians about the need to calibrate the sensors, and left, making it clear that his agreement was more about self-preservation than diplomacy.

One by one, the room emptied.

The metal door clicked softly.

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