Page 109 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
ragged coax, and nodded to Hafid. He threw
breakers like a man baptizing a machine.
The Silence Map fed upward, not as an image
but as instruction. Pirate transmitters bled it
through the old guts of Tangier—hotel intercoms,
dead elevator lines, the jukebox in a bar that had
gone sober during a war no one remembered. The
city learned what the Mirror planned for it: which
streets would be flattened, which vowels deprived
of oxygen.
Phones buzzed. Radios coughed up coordinates
whenever someone tuned past pop music. A
painter sitting on a crate in the Grand Socco looked
at the node marked for laughter suppression and
laughed until he cried and then laughed again.
“Truth in daylight,” Zhara said, hair wild with
static. “Let’s see whether knowledge helps or
hurts.”
Henry waited for Sofia’s voice. It didn’t come.
The city had stolen a beat. He watched people
below decide things: to argue, not to; to kiss, to
walk away; to buy bread twice from the same
woman so she’d have a reason to sing.
Carolina exhaled. “We got it out.”
Sera’s eyes, darker in victory than in fear, lifted
to the horizon. “Now she will answer.”
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