The dancing dust motes, playing in the angle sunbeams' amber glow, were the same. The tired, thankful ache in his bones was the same. But, as Professor
Reuben Stone stood between the two structures that had become the twin hubs of his life, and he knew that all was not as it used to be. To his right stood the Riverside clinic, its whitewashed walls now softly gilded by sunset. No longer a structure, it was now a living repository of a thousand moments of dread, heroism, and relief. He could pick up the echoes in there—Anna's calm voice calming a hysterical mother, the soft jingle of the System confirming an isolated outbreak, the determined silence of Miriam sorting records of supplies that now went beyond this village. He'd come with nothing but a ghostly system in his mind and a wild ne
