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“Guys, seriously, you couldn’t have given me five ht A sense of wrongness deep in places he couldn’t identify Bull tried to grit his teeth and found his jaw already clenched hard enough to ache Soht caught his attention Simple white LED with a sanded backsplash to diffuse it An eht The kind that came on when poas down It hurt to look at, but he did, using it to focus If he couldalar from outside In the corridor Bull’sinto the corridor, out into the wide, forht It was like trying to wake up except he was already awake

Slowly, he recognized the alar he’d hear in the medical bay He was in thesensation at his aro, his perception of the world shifted—he wasn’t standing, he was lying down Meaningless distinctions without gravity, but hu to assert direction on the directionless His neck ached His head ached So

There were other people in the bay Men and women on every bed, most with their eyes closed A new alar blood pressure Crashing Dying He shouted, and apast He adjusted so on her bed’s control board, then pushed off and away Bull tried to grab him as he went by, but he couldn’t

He’d been in his office Serge had already gone for the night A few minor incidents were piled up froe, poorly disciplined crew Like everyone else, he’d been waiting to see whether Holden and the Martians ca else would The fear hadthe presentation that the Rocinante had sent, Ja, This is e’re calling the slow zone He re that everyone had accepted Holden’s name for the place, and wondered whether it was just that theabout charisma that translated across the void

And then he’d been here Sootten past their defenses or else sabotage Maybe the whole da apart

There was a coed in, and used his security override to open its range to the full ship and not just the nurses’ station He requested a connection to Sam, and a few heartbeats later she appeared on the screen Her hair was floating around her head Null g always made him think of drowned people The sclera of her left eye was the bright red of fresh blood

“Bull,” she said with a grin that looked like relief “Jesus Christ with a side of chips, but I never thought I’d be glad to hear from you”

“Need a status report”

“Yeah,” she said “I better come by for this one You in your office?”

“Medical bay,” Bull said

“Be there in a jiff,” she said

“Sam What happened?”

“You reot turned into a thin paste when his ship hit the slow zone? Sa”

“We went too fast?” Bull said