The first morning without urgency felt like a word Kael didn't know how to pronounce.
He woke before the others, which wasn't unusual. He'd always woken early, in the years before Laundry Two, in the years before K-L and drives and chalk maps and a boy who thought in systems. Early mornings had been the part of the day that belonged to him before the city decided what he was worth.
He lay still for a moment, listening.
The market above them was beginning its day: the creak of the baker's oven, the particular percussion of crates being moved, Cass's footsteps crossing the floor overhead with the purposeful rhythm of someone who had a list of things to do and intended to do them.
No drone hum.
Not here.
Site B sat in the signal deadzone the baker's daughter had described three weeks ago, and the silence where D-14's frequency usually lived felt enormous and slightly unreal, like the absence of a sound you'd stopped noticing until it was gone.
Kael sat up.
