PROLOGUE
The first thing he understood was that the light belonged to no hour.
It was white, steady, unchanged. There was not enough shadow to tell him how much time had passed. For a few moments, he made no attempt to remember where he was. He lay still and let his body tell him what his mind had not yet managed to put in order.
The bitter taste came first. Not strong. Persistent. He felt it at the back of his tongue and swallowed slowly. Something had happened before this. He knew it with the kind of certainty that exists before memory returns.
He closed his eyes.
The image came back in fragments. A low light from one side. A movement cut short before it could be completed. Metal appearing where, a fraction of a second earlier, there had been nothing. Then the impact. Only one. Enough to leave everything that came before it on the other side.
He opened his eyes again.
He had spent his life noticing what other people failed to hide. The fraction of hesitation before an answer. The glance that broke away a moment too soon. The second movement, the one people made when they believed the first had already convinced everyone.
Now there was no second movement. There was only a blank space.
And for the first time in his life, what he could not remember frightened him more than what he could.
