It was five in the morning, a time that Mike had always found to be both honest and relaxing, especially after what he had done the night before.
Cities didn't perform at five in the morning. They were just themselves, quiet and functional, doing the maintenance work that daylight hours were too busy for.
He had woken up in enough of them, in enough different countries, to have developed a working theory that you could understand a place better at five AM than at any other time, because that was when it stopped trying.
He lay on his back and looked at the ceiling.
Beside him, Petricia slept the kind of deep sleep that comes when a long-held tension finally eases.
She lay completely still, her breathing steady and even. She occupied space without apology, a stark contrast to her movements throughout the rest of the building, where she always seemed to carry an air of self-management and a keen awareness of how much space she took up.
Mike watched the ceiling for a moment.
