The final hour of the countdown was the quietest hour Earth had ever known.
The psychic bond Luna had described wasn't active yet, but something else was. A collective held breath. Eight billion people, from the command centers to the darkest refugee tents, looked up. They watched the four familiar lights in the sky. They waited.
In the Global Unified Command, the atmosphere was thick enough to choke on. Screens showed nothing but empty space where the long-range sensors predicted the Correction Fleet's emergence point, just beyond lunar orbit. The clock ticked down the last minutes.
00:05:00... 00:04:59...
Alexander stood beside Scarlett, their hands clasped so tight their knuckles were white. Weber leaned on a console, his face gray with exhaustion. General Petrov stared at the main screen, his expression that of a man watching a tsunami he couldn't outrun.
