The blade had been ordinary steel.
Eli remembered that before he remembered the hand holding it. He had spent so long imagining some extraordinary reason for his death that the plainness of the weapon remained an offense. A hunter had drawn a knife in a sealed room and put it into a porter who could no longer get past the men at the door. The blade had not needed a command window. The man had not needed to know Eli’s name.
“Pressure rising,” Juno said.
The words belonged in the chamber. He knew they did. He could feel the padded mount beneath his arms and the vibration traveling through its legs. Then Bram stepped into the place where the technician had been standing, broad shoulders cutting off the path to the isolation lever.
Eli tasted blood.
His first death had sometimes returned in pieces: an angle of floor, the terrible stupidity of worrying about a confiscated pack, the pause during which he had still thought he might explain himself. This arrived whole enough that he did not question its edges. He had been afraid for so long that familiarity seemed like evidence.
“Open your right hand,” Tessa said.
He saw the knife and closed both fists.
