Chapter Two: The Shadow Performs Only Once

Lu demanded identification. She placed a silver disk on the desk. A sun split by a vertical line marked its face; seven coordinates covered the reverse. “European Joint Corona Anomaly Observatory,” she said. “That sounds invented.” “It is. I can't tell you the real name.” She pocketed the disk. “But I can tell you there will be no rain tomorrow. What you saw was shattered glass.” Her structural model showed high-voltage cables beneath the plaza and a lighting rig anchored to an abandoned air-raid shelter. During totality, the global broadcast servers had suffered 4.7 seconds of inexplicable overload. In those seconds, underground sensors detected one hundred and eighty tons of additional weight that did not exist.