How has she never seen where this was headed, when it was so painfully obvious? You absolute child, she thinks. He was hit with shrapnel from an explosion two hundred miles above Earth, and you thought he’d survive? An abrupt and violent silence crashes into the room, and she snaps back into the moment. She sees the blood drain out of Ray’s face. “Flight, Surgeon. John Griffin is dead.” Joan can feel the liquid iron core of the Earth pulling her toward it, down into the depths of a hell she does not believe in.
