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Every time the protomolecule soldiers had been involved in violence, Venus had reacted The OPA had just destroyed a hundred of its half-huht between excitee scattered and re-for the sensors Avasarala said so sharp that could have been show e stopped and refrareen ship A heads-up display ain, and when it re-formed, the Mer end over end, tu, and the screen went back to its original ie Now that Prax knew to look, he could see the tiny dot of the Mer near the penumbra There were other tiny specks like it

The dark side of Venus pulsed like a sudden, planetary flash of lightning under the obscuring clouds And then it glowed

Vast fila like spokes on a wheel lit white and vanished The clouds of Venus shifted, disturbed fro a wake on the surface of a water tank when a fish passed close underneath Vast and glowing, it rose through the cloud cover Spoke-like strands of iridescence arced with vast lightning storether like the arid central node Once it had climbed out of Venus’ thick cloud cover, it launched itself away fro it The other ships in its path were scattered and hurled away A long plulowed like snowflakes and slivers of ice Prax tried to e as Ganyether, accelerating without any visible drive plu, but his body was still as stone

Mei patted his cheek with her open palm and pointed to the screen

“What’s that?” she asked

Epilogue: Holden

Holden started the replay again The wall screen in the Rocinante’s galley was too sh-resolution iery the Celestine had taken But Holden couldn’t stop watching it no nored cup of coffee cooled on the table in front of him next to the sandwich he hadn’t eaten

Venus flashed with light in an intricate pattern The heavy cloud cover swirled as though caught in a planetwide stor a thick contrail of Venus’ atmosphere in its wake

“Come to bed,” Naomi said, then leaned forward in her chair and took his hand “Get so And the way it swatted all those ships out of the way Effortless, like a whale swi about it?”

“This is the end, Nao his eyes away from the screen to look at her “What if this is the end? This isn’t so is what the proto to hijack all life on the Earth toabout it?” she repeated Her words were harsh, but her voice was kind and she squeezed his fingers affectionately

Holden turned back to the screen, restarting the ih alike leaves The surface of the atan to roil and twist

“Okay,” Nao to bed Don’t wake me when you co away from the video feed The massive shape folded itself into a streamlined dart, like a piece of wet cloth plucked up from the center, then fleay The Venus it left behind looked di vital had been stolen from it to construct the alien artifact

And here it was After all the fighting, with human civilization left in chaos just from its presence, the protomolecule had finished the job it came billions of years before to do Would humanity survive it? Would the protorand work?

It wasn’t the ending of one thing that left Holden terrified It was the prospect of so that was utterly outside the human experience Whatever happened next, no one could be prepared for it

It scared the hell out of him

Behind him, a man cleared his throat

Holden turned reluctantly away froalley refrigerator as if he’d always been there, ruht blue firefly flew off his cheek, then hung in the air beside hinat His expression was one of discootta talk”