The Fall of Babel (The Books of Babel #4)

by Josiah Bancroft

know what they all got wrong? The nature of survival. The heroes who survived their ordeals always came out the other end unchanged. Maybe they walked away with a nice little scar on their cheek or a fitting shock of gray hair. But essentially, in all the ways that matter, they emerged the same as they were before.” He clucked his tongue and rolled his head upon his pillow. “That’s not how it is though, is it? Survival makes you a stranger to yourself.” “Then we can be strangers together.” Tom raised a hand to his headboard and rapped out their signal phrase—hard, soft, hard—a simple tattoo that had come to mean good night and I am glad you are close by and please, don’t leave and a hundred other things they’d not yet found the words or courage to say.