The funeral was two days later.
James saw the coffin at the front of the room and understood something he had been carefully not understanding for five days.
The Tower restored things. The light came down after every floor and closed every wound, and you stood up whole. He had died twice and come back. He had brought one of the Seven back from ash. He had more Authority in his hands than any human being on Earth.
None of it could do anything about the box at the front of that room.
The family had asked if he would say a few words.
He had written something. He had written it at his desk at two in the morning, and it said that Ronan Cleary had held the front line of Team Zero for every floor they had cleared. It said he had taken more damage for other people than any Challenger in the country, and that Floor 40 would not have been cleared without him.
All of it was true. When he stood up at the front and looked at the paper, it read like a casualty report.
