MINE IN EVERY LIFETIME
Chapter Sixty Seven — Six Years Before
Nobody moved for a long moment.
The archive was very quiet.
The single light above the table.
The forty seven files spread across it.
Her mother's program file in her hands.
Mara looked at the date at the top.
At the six years.
She was a mathematician about it.
She could not help it.
Six years before the bond.
Six years before Mara existed.
Clara Voss had been seventeen years old.
Seventeen.
A girl.
Flagged by a Council program she had no idea existed.
For a daughter she had not yet had.
For a bond she had not yet found.
For a Triad that was still twenty three years from completing itself.
Mara set the file down.
She set it down carefully.
The way you put something down when you are afraid of what you will
