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"I’ll reentle I started to turn toward her "Shhh Don’t open your eyes Just co on et soue You don’t do well on sleep dep You never have Now, go to sleep You have hours to kill before the sun goes down"

She was right I knew she was right, just like I knew she wasn’t there; she was the part ofthe rest of inable a of her hand on my shoulder as I fell backward on the bed, eyes still closed, gear still on, and let myself drift off into sleep

My drea I saw my team die half a dozen times, in half a dozen ways Oddly, that helped, because every ti else that wouldn’t work for getting us into the building alive We were going to need to be careful, and quick, and never hesitate

The light in the rooone, but that didn’t matter; she’d be back, and soon She always came back

I went to the bathrooan the final preparations to depart I was loading my pockets with clips when a speaker hidden soora said, "Mr Mason, I apologize for the interruption, but Mr Gowda has been trying to reach you for the past fifteen minutes I didn’t want to wake you Will you accept the call?"

"If I don’t, he’ll probably wind up co "Hell, I’m surprised he hasn’t already I’ll take it"

"Thank you" The Agora went silent, followed by another chime

"Shaun?" It was Mahir this ti worried Business as usual, in other words

"Hey, Mahir What’s up? Aren’t you like, three doors down? This takes ‘lazy’ to a new level, don’t you think? Then again, I just spent the whole day asleep, so who am I to talk?" I couldn’t fit any more clips init toabout this particular suicide mission: We’d downloaded floor plans for all the ht before we followed Kelly into the Meh office that we had pretty good blueprints It didn’t show any secret tunnels, but it had the public areas At least ouldn’t be lost while ere rushing off to our deaths

There was a tiht would havewhat has becon

"Alaric tried to get in touch with me"

My head snapped up No one respects radio silence like a Newsie It’s practically one of their sacred creeds, right alongside "protecting your sources" and "off the record" "Did he say why?"

"No, and that’s why I’e he left was basically ‘you know thisit,’ over and over I already tried dialing one of his burn phones"