The silence was more violent than the gunfire had been. It was a physical weight, an absolute vacuum of sound that sucked the air out of the Iron Garden. One moment, the greenhouse had been a theater of war—glass shattering, Liam’s rifle barking, the roar of gunship turbines—and the next, it was a tomb.I lay on the cold, damp moss, my chest heaving, clutching the tiny, wet weight of my child. The infant didn't struggle. It didn't shiver. It simply stared upward with eyes that were two pools of perfect, matte ink.Across the shattered glass of the entrance, three GSC soldiers stood like wax statues, their fingers frozen on triggers, their boots half-submerged in the geothermal stream. Above them, a black gunship hung suspended in the air, its rotors motionless, defying gravity as if the laws of physics had been put on a permanent pause.“Nora?” Liam’s voice was a ragged whisper. He was standing near the doorway, his pistol raised, his body the only thing still moving in the foyer
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