Quite frankly, she could have done with less time in that dream, within and without, and it took her a moment to place the sarcasm. But of course Cain would be a little less perturbed by the passing of an entire year; for her, it was still a significant fraction of her life to date.

"I suppose it was too much to hope that any of our old housing would remain both unoccupied and unmolested," Raine said with a little sigh, looking ahead along the road. She'd left things in her suite-- nothing vital, but some of her collated research. Clothes. She'd almost started to settle in again, but that had, in retrospect, been foolish. "I wonder. Have you been to the hospital?"