The rooftop wind was acrid with ash and conclusions. It tore at Dawud's keffiyeh, pulling the loose ends into a crazed whirl around a bloody-orange smeared horizon by the fires below. Cairo was an embroidery of fire and night, a monster, bleeding, struggling out its end in a dozen scattered quarters. The sirens formed part of the city's symphony, a wearily electronic dirge. From this height, the riots were not a confusion of scattered faces and cries, but a pattern—a fever chart of a collapsing civilization.
Sarah was lost. The quiet she left behind was a void no collection of System data could cover. Her loss was an ultimate judgment, one more critical than any fatwa or corporate hit squad. She had anchored him to the man he was, to the clean, simple mission of a healer. Now, the anchor
