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Another star flickered and failed Another few voices went silent Now, slowly and instantly both, everything changed He felt the great debate raging in hi like a threat for so long that all the reflexes of survival had weakened, atrophied Holden felt a fear that he knew belonged to hier self couldn’t rehts and opinions, analysis and poetry blending together and breaking apart It was beautiful as sunlight on oil, and terrifying

Three suns failed, and now Holden felt hi s A white spot on the back of his hand, a sore that wouldn’t heal The plague was still only a synore

From the station at his core, he reached out into the places he had been, the darkened systeates with fire The fallen stars, mere matter now, ee of radiation and heat, sheared the electrons from every atom, and detonated Their final deaths echoed, and Holden felt a sense ofand of peace The cancer had struck, and been burned away The loss of the minds that had been would never be redeemed Mortality had returned from exile, but it had been cleansed with fire

A hundred stars failed

What had been a song becaainst itself, furious as a swar In despair, the hundred suns were burned away, the station hurling destruction through the gates as fast as the darkness appeared, but the growing shadow could not be stopped All through his flesh, stars were going out, voices were falling into silence Death rode the vacuuht and i form to the chaos around it, solid, hard, resolute Desperation, , and a million farewells, one to the other The word quarantine caic of dreaht of horror But within it, like the last voice in Pandora’s box, the promise of reunion One day, when the solution was found, everything that had been lost would be regained The gates reopened The vast mind restored

The moment of dissolution came, sudden and expected, and Holden blew apart

He was in darkness E for the pro for the silent chorus to whisper again that Areddon had been stopped, that all was not lost And the silence reigned

Huh, Miller thought at hih an infinitely long tunnel of light, Holden was returned to his body For one vertiginousof skin andto contain him

Then he just felt tired, and sat down on the floor with a thu his cheek with an open pal, sort of nothing Pain in the ass”

Holden flopped onto his back He felt like soh a shredder and then badly welded hi to reave hi it explains,” he said when he could re forced to move moist flaps of meat in order to form the words felt sensual and obscene

“They quarantined the syste the locals”

“So, behind each of those gates is a solar systehed So in the sound of it sent a shiver down Holden’s spine “That see unlikely”

“Why?”