Chapter 20: Karev's Hand

The tool hit the deck grating with a sound that was very small and very loud.

Karev looked at it for a moment. Then he picked it up.

The rebreather valve assembly was laid out across Thresh's secondary worktable in the order it had come apart — fourteen components, each seated in its marked position on the silicone spread cloth, smallest to largest the way the Forge had trained him to work, the way he still worked because the habit was older than any conscious decision. He had been replacing the compression ring on the secondary intake feed. The work required a torque driver and a particular grip angle that he had used, by his own estimate, several hundred times over fifteen years without variation.