It took four minutes.
Lena would remember, afterward, that it took exactly four minutes — not because she counted, but because she felt every second of it, the field's hundreds of small searching threads finding fragments, one after another, each discovery a tiny easing of the strain that had been building for eleven minutes before.
The man-shaped thing's hand had gone still after the first twitch.
For a long moment nothing else happened, and Lena thought — with a coldness that settled into her chest — that's it. One fragment. The field found one piece, and it's not enough, and the strain is going to keep building because one piece out of hundreds is nothing.
Then the second one came.
She felt it the way Flynn had described — the field's reach narrowing, finding, touching. A fragment
