Chapter 26: The Synchrony Run — Four Realities, One Breath

They left the Seam Station in the grey hour before the countdown hit forty, each through a different exit, and none of them looked back.

This was not agreed upon. It simply happened: Lira stepped through the Varenthal gate while Maren was still checking her coat, and Maren stepped through the Casket City gate while Desta was still adjusting her pack straps, and Jax stepped through the galactic relay gate with his console already open, and Desta was the last, standing alone for one full breath in the station's cycling air — starlight and rain and machine-oil and silence — and she looked at the four exits they had used and the two they hadn't, and she turned, and walked through the Colony Harrow gate without looking back because looking back was for people who were uncertain, and she was not uncertain.

She was afraid, which was different.