[Jake's POV]
The first thing I noticed was the silence inside my head. For two years, the Oracle had been a constant pressure behind my eyes, turning every room into a map and every person into a calculation. Even when I slept, if what I did during those two years could be called sleep, there had always been movement inside my skull. Numbers shifted. Patterns formed. Routes opened and collapsed. But now, sitting on the observation deck of the Vanguard with the Mediterranean stretching black and silver beneath the moonlight, there was nothing.
