Chapter 5: Everything Mira Saw When the Architect Spoke

The pill was halfway down her throat when the world ended.

Not ended—relocated. Mira understood the distinction in the first half-second of transit, the way the institutional corridor of Ward Seven simply ceased rather than collapsed, the overhead fluorescents swallowed mid-flicker, the linoleum still cold against her socked feet one moment and then not there to be cold at all. She had read the orderly's intention to dose her forty minutes early. She had let it happen because resisting drew the kind of attention that required explanations she was too tired to manufacture. The half-dissolved tablet was still chalky on her tongue when she arrived.

She swallowed it anyway. Habit.