The strategy room had one long table, and that morning nobody sat at it properly.
They had pulled the chairs round to face the wall screen instead, close together, like people waiting for a film. Somebody had brought up coffee at half eight. By ten it was still on the side table in its cardboard tray, five cups with the lids on, going cold.
The screen was paused on one frame. It was the clearest one they had. The Echo was standing in the crater with its wings dragged down behind it, the floor broken round its feet, and its face turned slightly toward the camera.
The display hummed. Outside the glass, the staff had been told to leave them alone, and they were doing it so carefully that nobody walked past the door at all.
Alice stood at the end of the row with her arms folded.
"Everyone on the news is calling it Wrath," said Cillian.
"It wasn't him," said Alice.
She said it to the screen, not to them.
