The lights across the observatory deck died mid-flicker — on, off, on — and in the half-second of dark between the second on and the third, Sekar watched the monitoring station's readout curl into numbers with no unit attached to them at all.
"Get her back." Not a request.
Rama already had their daughter off his hip, her small weight pulled flush against his chest, one hand cupping the back of her skull the way he had a hundred times before, whenever the floor changed under them without warning and there wasn't time to explain why. In his other hand, forgotten, was the small wooden bird she'd been holding — a gift from one of Nakamura and Jin-ho's visits, chewed soft at one wing. It slipped from his fingers and rolled somewhere under the console, and he didn't go after it.
"Sekar—"
