Chapter 18: Cayne's Public Address

Drift woke me in ninety minutes, not two, which told me something had changed.

I was on my feet before he said anything, jacket already gripped in one hand, notebook already in the other. The chemical light had shifted from green to a yellower tone — battery running low, or a change in the ambient temperature of the room, or both. The water-reprocessing pipes had quieted. In the silence that replaced them I could hear Drift breathing in a specific way: controlled, deliberate, the kind of breathing that means the body wants to do something else.

"What," I said.