For the first time in what felt like forever, there was silence. Not the suffocating kind that came after a firefight, or the brittle calm before something else broke—but real, human silence. The kind that made you aware of your own heartbeat.

Hale hadn’t realized how much noise had filled his world until it was gone. The static in his comms, the endless drone of system alerts, the coded hum of the Echo—all of it had faded, leaving only the faint rhythm of Evelyn’s breathing against ...