There was a palpable silence in the Riverside clinic, heavy with exhaustion and the faintly sickly smell of struggle. The worst was in the past. The contained outbreak had shaken their community but not broken it, and their central group—Reuben, Anna, the nurses—bonded by the raw loyalty of those who had stood as one and stared into the abyss. The single fatality, small Finn, was an open wound, but the thirty lives saved were a balm. Reuben allowed himself a fleeting moment of self-indulgence to lean on a clean countertop and savor the pure, unadulterated feeling of fatigue. His System interface in his head was peaceful, displaying only a roster of the crisis averted and the considerable number of Development Points earned. It was peaceful, though fragile. Or maybe it was just the absence
