Chapter 8: Launch Day — The Sixty-Second Countdown

The tube arrives at 0557.

Not the gong, not the arena — the tube first, the mechanism of it, a cylinder of reinforced glass lowered into the launch room floor with a hydraulic precision that leaves no room for metaphor. It simply descends. It opens. A Capitol attendant in a white uniform gestures toward it with the practiced neutrality of someone who has done this forty-seven times and has learned not to look at faces.

Hamlet steps inside.