Fifty-two days into the break, James was coming up from the lower hall with a towel round his neck when every phone on the operations floor went off at once.
He knew that sound by now. It was not a clear alert from the tracker app, which buzzed once. This was the System, and it came up in front of his eyes at the same moment as everybody else's.
`[GLOBAL TOWER ANNOUNCEMENT]`
`[FLOOR 38 CLEARED]`
`[REGION: UNITED STATES]`
Somebody at a desk said "There it is," quietly, like they had been holding a bet in their head for a week.
One of the operations staff was already up at the frontier board with a tablet. James watched her move the American flag up the screen until it sat on the line under Ireland's, and then she changed the line itself, so that the two flags shared it. Floor 38, both of them. Korea sat one line down, close enough that nobody was relaxed about it.
