The asphalt of the interstate felt endless under the tires of the taxi. Caleb watched the landscape shift from the dense, industrial sprawl of Illinois into the rolling, dark timberlands of the Virginia countryside. The driver, a man who had not spoken a single word since they left Chicago, kept his eyes fixed strictly on the road. Caleb did not blame him. The atmosphere outside the car felt heavy, like the static before a massive lightning storm.
He pulled the shard from his pocket. It had stopped pulsing with a golden light and now emitted a steady, low-frequency hum that he could feel in his molars. The device Silas had provided him—a simple, handheld frequency mapper—lay on the seat beside him. It was silent, which meant the Bureau's sensors were blind to what was happening here. They were looking for massive, high-energy tears in reality. They weren't looking for the slow, parasitic rot of a synchronized anchor.
