One second after the bridge took load, the brace burst.
Mara was already out of the cradle. She stood in the Quiet Forge’s inner chamber, a step from the shield door, with her burned arm held against her chest in its sling and Sera’s hand still on the cradle release beside her. She was looking at the light on the bridge.
Then the light changed.
It came from the housing’s side, where the four remaining brace segments had carried the bridge through Eshel’s bypass for the whole of the swap, forty-two seconds and one more, while the handover ran. They had held the bridge’s load until the new heart took it. And when the new heart took it, and the bridge’s full weight came off the brace all at once, the four segments’ softened joints, heated past anything they had been built for, let go.
A white flash. From the housing’s side. Brilliant. It lit the whole chamber for an instant, every surface, every face, and threw Mara’s shadow long across the floor toward the cradle.
Then fragments. White-hot, small, a spray of them. They struck the shield glass in the frame bay with a sound like hail on a tin roof. Dozens. They struck the frame plate on the outer hall’s wall. They struck the floor and skittered and went dark.
