34 The world still moved, he knew. It had to; time did not stop for one man, one people, one city in the middle of the desert. But for Lukas, everything stood still despite the slow drift of movement through the streets. So many people passed him as he waited, numb, watching the agonizing process of Jesse’s undoing projected shamelessly everywhere he looked. Most people looked away from the screens now. They shook their heads, tending to their own tasks as if they could not fathom how a man could let such a thing happen to himself. A mother walked by, wrapped in the same fraying rags as her two toddlers and steered them down a particularly unsavory-looking alley just to spare them the sight they could most likely not escape anyway. A man and his wife spat on the ground at Lukas’s feet, n

