The safehouse was a grave. The air, thick with the shadow of printer's ink and dust, was now thick with another, crushing silence—the silence following the end of the world. Outside, through the one, grimy window, the orange glow of a burning city pulsed like an infected heart, throwing long, dancing shadows that twisted over Dawud's face as he stared at the data-slate, its screen a mosaic of global chaos. Sarah stood in the doorway, watching him. She had been watching for a long time.
She saw the slump of his shoulders as if he carried the weight of the sky that was collapsing.
She saw the tremble of his hands that was not fear and was, rather, a reflection of power maintained too long, too tightly.
The man she loved was being eroded, grain by grain, by the cold, unyielding image of th
