The pulse ran.
Mara felt it go into the return. Through the cradle plate, through the chair, through the graft behind her left ear: the heart’s tone peaking, and at the peak a door opening in it, and the pressure going out, away from the fracture, through the test channel. Into the mirror iron at thirty-one degrees, and turning there, the long easy curve of the river bending, and out through the shell into the brace’s hot joints.
“One,” Mara said. She was counting heartbeats. Her own. Sera’s clip on her wrist. “Two.”
“One second,” Eshel said. From the repeater. “Two.”
The mirror skin ticked.
She heard it through the graft. A small dry sound, regular, like a ship’s hull cooling after a burn. Tick. Tick. The lining in the test channel, carrying a hundred times what it had carried in the yard, heating, flexing.
“Three,” Mara said. “Four.”
“Three seconds. Four.”
