Katherine arrived on the thirty-second floor seventeen minutes later, carrying a portable lab station, three neural interface cables, and a thermos of coffee that she thrust into Jack's hands with the wordless efficiency of a woman who had been managing crises for so long that caffeine delivery was an automated reflex."Haley, sit still," Katherine ordered, attaching sensors to Haley's temples. "I need baseline readings before I can design a countermeasure.""I am sitting still. Mostly. My left foot is tapping but that's because I'm nervous, not because an ancient void-entity is using my brain as a radio antenna." Haley paused. "Although now that I say it out loud, it sounds worse."Jack stood by the window, the compass in one hand and the coffee in the other, watching the Manhattan skyline with eyes that saw more than glass and steel. Through the gauntlets, he could perceive the faint shimmer of the Engraver's harmonic field, an invisible web of crystallized-time fre
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