He sat with it for a moment longer, in the quiet of the guest room, with Mireya's breathing even and deep beside him.
Then he thought about the Underlayer and the shape of tomorrow and the way the two things connected.
The Underlayer could not wait indefinitely. Gelion's intelligence network presented an ongoing challenge rather than a resolved issue.
The second-stratum contacts were still holding, but the standdown order he had relayed through Gelion's network weeks ago was not a permanent state. It was a pause, and pauses had durations.
He needed to be in the Underlayer before the pause expired on its own terms.
'Tomorrow,' he thought. 'Before the city woke up properly.'
He dressed without making noise and moved toward the door.
He stopped once, at the threshold, and looked back at Mireya's sleeping form in the narrow guest bed.
