Night at camp was a different creature. The heat-blinding, frenzied energy of the day gave way to a heavy, tired silence, broken only by the cough of a child or the subdued moan of an awake household. These were Dawud's sacred hours, the only time obligations against him flagged, the only time the weight of his command was a little less crushing. He sat on the floor of his clinic, wall at his back, suspended in the state between wake and the Genome Nexus, when the darkness was shattered.
It began with the dogs. A din of frantic barking on the outskirts of the camp, high and piercing, then a yelp of surprise as something was severed. Then running footsteps—not the tired, shuffling gait of refugees, but the swift, determined tread of trained soldiers. A woman's scream was abruptly silenced,
