The compound was quiet by ten.
Not the quietness of a place at rest — the quietness of a place holding its breath. The perimeter ran its doubled rotation. The secondary line in the creek bed held position. The war room lights stayed on.
Mira sat on the roof.
She had a cup of Marta's tea and the nearly full moon and the particular quality of a night before something significant — the specific awareness of standing at the edge of a before that was about to become an after, with no way to know exactly what the after would look like.
She was not afraid.
She had examined this repeatedly in the past week, checking for the calculation running underneath, the old habit of finding exits before she let herself be present. It was not running. She was simply here, in this moment, on this roof, wi
