OUR FOREST OF THORNS | tbosas ✔️

019 || Motherland Calls

This man interrupting his peace had a lab coat around him, fluttering as he ran as fast as he could towards them, cheeks flushed and thick eyebrows raised.

Much to Coriolanus' dismay, the man didn't slow down until he was right in front of Daphne — had she not stopped in time, he would have bumped right into her.

"You absolute genius," the man grasped her within a hug that had pried Daphne's arm away from holding onto Coriolanus. The tight embrace ended almost as abruptly as it came in full strength, lifting Daphne just a few inches off the ground, thus she really had no room to protest. After seeing that she was back on her feet in steady fashion, the man grasped her now freed hand for a firmed shake, "The new element stabilized."

"As I expected it would," Daphne took the compliment with class and ease, though the surprise embrace had managed to momentarily startle her. To prompt the end of their handshake, Daphne nodded in appreciation.

Everything about what had happened there was either too quick or too formal for Coriolanus to make an actual appreciation in regards to the relationship status between the two.

"Dr. Watt, allow me to introduce you to Coriolanus Snow," she moved her hand to hook it around Coriolanus' arm once again, thus effortlessly putting to rest his bubbling worries, "he's here to assist the demonstration. Coryo, this is Dr. Galvan Watt. He runs things around here, on my behalf."

Dr. Watt measured Coriolanus from top to bottom before giving him a firm handshake as well. There was something about this scientist that disturbed Coriolanus deeply on the spot, something which he could however not place, because he doubted it was a boring and casual case of jealousy — he had no reason to feel threatened in his position of importance in Daphne's life by a man far older than her who she sees perhaps not even once a year.

"Now then," Daphne motioned them to keep going forward. "Tell me about the decaying rate."

"Yes, it's bigger than your approximation," Dr. Watt answered. "Nothing that would jeopardize your risk calculation's veracity though, and nothing that we won't be able to solve after the test. For the next batch, I mean. But it was high enough a rate to demand of us to send the drones in place ahead of your arrival. The Gadget is thirty minutes from position."

"Weather?"

"Suitable. No clouds. The winds are blowing towards the wastelands. But we are still tracking everything."

"Perfect. And how's our coastline looking?"

"District 5 is on the line, waiting for your call to shut down all power in the coastal region," Dr. Watt nodded.

Rebels, Coriolanus' mind discovered what had been the reassembly that had disturbed him a moment ago, prompted now to draw a more coherent connection given the mention of another District. Communication as such between Districts was prohibited, last he checked, and the manner in which the scientist measured him with some sort of superiority in his judgemental state, it was undeniable that it fit the outline of a classic traitor to the state, something he knew for a fact Daphne was not.

"You should probably also know that Birches is working on canceling the test," Dr. Watt grimaced. "She said she's found a dangerous flaw in the new parameters your element brings to previous equations."

"Of course she did," Daphne hardly resisted rolling her eyes.

They were right before the double doors ending the corridor when Coriolanus stopped walking and pulled Daphne to a stop with him. She needn't an actual verbal confirmation to get the hint and motion for Thaddeus and Watt to go ahead into what Coriolanus glimpsed to have been a conference room filled with monitors of different sizes, in which a lot more people in lab coats awaited.