[SERA — POV]
Morning briefing was at six sharp and she walked in with two hours and forty minutes of sleep, three cups of coffee, and the knowledge that she was about to stand in a room with her uncle and Brennan and the empty chair where Pellier usually sat, and do the specific performance of operational normalcy.
The empty chair was noticed immediately.
"Pellier is in the infirmary," her uncle said, before anyone asked. His voice was—steady. That was the word. He'd spent a night restructuring everything he believed about the past eleven years, and he'd come to his morning briefing with a steady voice and clear eyes, and she loved him for it and felt sick for him simultaneously. "A health matter. We'll have a full briefing on it in due course."
Brennan looked at the chair and then at
