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was. His knuckles rapped against the metal of the laboratory door, the sound hollow and echoing.
    Frost jerked the door open and Mason rocked back, surprised at the suddenness.
    “There you are.” Frost dragged the metal door over the flagstones, the scrape of metal cutting across Mason’s nerves. “I believe I have...something.” A line creased his forehead. “Possibly.” He waved his arm. “Inside.”
    The dry static of the air moved across Mason’s skin and he held down a shiver. “Nestor sent you thirty men and two guns.”
    “Good,” Frost murmured. “My staff also have pelekys energy weapons training, and the Hall shield is at full power. We’re secure as we can be.” Frost dimmed the milky blue of the sconces, the rich scent of the sea fading back and the metallic burn of the screen itching at Mason’s senses. “And you were right. I found something.”
    Frozen flat against the large screen was a single shot of the cold room. It had an almost luminous quality and was sharper than any photograph Mason had ever seen, not that he had seen one several feet wide before. At the bottom of the screen, the complicated patterns stood out.
    Frost’s brother was half obscured by the wide grey cylinder, caught midstride, his face bleak, his arm swung out with a white-knuckled fist. His clothes were as fine as anything Frost would wear, impeccably tailored and pressed. The similarity between the brothers was stark, a perfection to their features that seemed more carved than true life. Had they carried such perfection before their transfiguration?
    There was nothing else in the room, simply a set of empty tables with the ragged remains of muslin littering their scrubbed surfaces. Yet...Mason’s instincts kicked in as they had when he’d assured Frost his brother was alive.
    Mason stretched out his hand, his fingers hovering over the heated metal, the charge of static pricking his fingertips. “Something is there. I don’t know...”
    The clank and hiss of the device Frost held caused Mason to blink. In that moment, the image faded and refocused, drawing closer to Menelaus. A faint shadow across the short lapel of his coat appeared strange. There was no light cast in the room.
    “It’s a smear of dirt. The thoughtless wipe of a thumb. Though not his.” Frost drew the focus in again to the material. “And not the same as the mud that stained the floor. That was well-manured topsoil.” He ran his finger along the confusion of numbers labelling the bottom of the screen. “No, this was radically different. Specific traces of oil, sand, smoke, sulphur dioxide.”
    “Somewhere industrial.”
    Frost lifted an eyebrow and Mason stared at him.
    “He’s here? ”
    The device clanked again, coloured light chasing through the dials and over the copper. Another flat image of the cold room appeared, Menelaus standing stern before the cylinder. Dark eyes with an inner burn of light seemed to flicker, and the movement forced Mason’s heart to drum. What was happening?
    He caught the movement of Frost’s hands. The image was rolling slowly forward through time. A brilliant flare of white light surged up from the floor, almost obscuring Menelaus. Almost...but not quite. Yet his image seemed to dissolve, independent of the growing surge of the explosion.
    “He stepped back. Into the cylinder.”
    “He’s alive.” With a flick of his fingers, Frost dulled the metal screen and the charge in the air died with it. Soft blue light grew, and the scent of the ocean eased into Mason’s lungs. “The cylinder had to be koile , formed to move him—them—from one place to another.”
    “And he’s here.”
    “He’s here. Somewhere in the city.” Frost dropped the metal device back onto the cluttered bench. “Menelaus has come home.”
    “The Crown of Towers could be in play.” Mason ran a hand over his hair. “And we’ve—you’ve—made no headway in understanding what it is.”
    Frost rubbed at his jaw. “No.