Dara's extension failed at 6 AM.
Not catastrophically — it didn't burn out, didn't spike, didn't give a wrong reading. It simply reached the bottom of what it could do and stopped. The number on the screen held at 61.4 meters and refused to go further, the way a rope goes taut when the thing it's tied to is heavier than the person holding it.
She stared at the readout for a long moment. Then she wrote 61.4 in her notebook, drew a line under it, and below the line wrote: and then what.
Kai watched her from across the instrument table. He had been awake since Orren arrived, which meant he had been awake for most of the last twenty-six hours, and the particular clarity that comes at the far edge of sleeplessness had settled over everything — the amber markers in the early morning light, the modified instrument on its tripod, the line of Dara's shoulders as she looked at a number that was not enough.
He said: "The Field goes further."
Dara looked up.
