Jade learned quickly which silences were useless.
Panic silence spread when people saw too much blood and waited for responsibility to land on someone else's shoulders. Hospital silence had rubber soles, rolling beds, printer clicks, elevator bells, and nurses speaking with their hands full.
The silence inside Jade's skull was worse.
It made everyone look farther away.
She sat at the cafeteria command table with Waddell on her left, Kieran on her right, Tessa across from her with one hand bandaged, and Director Caelin split across three screens because the man apparently became more annoying when divided into pixels.
Sound stayed gone.
The Reaper thread had taken Ty's voice first, then the room, then everything except pressure. Pressure still came through. Phones vibrating against wood. Kieran's gold flaring near Jade's elbow. The pull of living people in the shelter breathing too hard.
Waddell wrote on a yellow legal pad and turned it toward her.
