A Novella - Sardonic Surveillance
Prologue: The Breakfast Table Fracture The coffee in a mug is still hot but the morning seems dead. Quiet, calm. The tv is on and there's Charlie, his face is a pale mask under studio lights. His voice faltering and stripped of the comforting professional cadence that usually anchors the morning. Beside him is the empty chair where his co-host should be feels like an omission of safety, The North Tower is an open black throat spewing soot into a sky so blue it looks artificial and then the eye registers those dots. Tiny fluttering punctuation marks dropping against the grid of steel and glass. Real people are plummeting from ninety stories up because the alternative inside that burning box is worse. The mind stalls refusing the data and slams against the screen. This isn't a movie. There are no commercial breaks coming to save you. Then the second shadow slices through the frame. A low screaming bank, a flash of gray aluminum and the South Tower doesn't just catch ...