The roads were still clogged with the displaced and the frightened. The territory was being absorbed with the systematic patience of something that had done this before and expected to do it again.
Inside, in the quiet of a hospital room that smelled of antiseptic and the particular staleness of recycled air, a plan had been seeded in the dark, small still, and requiring time and precision and the kind of patience that most people lacked the architecture to sustain.
Maya sat with her hands folded in her lap and her thinking clear and her expression giving away nothing.
She had always been patient.
And she had always been considerably more capable than the people around her had thought to look for.
