Raven briefly pondered the phrase, "staring down the barrel of a gun". It wasn't really that accurate, he decided. After all, it was too dark to see any features down a barrel, only a black circle at the end of it.

— A. Ashley Straker

Raven scowled at her. 'Fine. But if I accidentally shoot you because my aim is shaky, because I'm too tense, because I wasn't given the chance to relax before going into a potentially very dangerous situation, you'll be happy blaming only yourself?

— A. Ashley Straker

She stared at Raven in a long second of shocked silence, before sagging to the floor.

— A. Ashley Straker

Simon shook his head. 'I don't want to be a hero. I'd rather abandon the technology altogether, sit on a hill and speak to my neighbors by smoke-signal.

— A. Ashley Straker

Simon stopped listening. He realized he'd had enough. Enough of the theories, enough of the mystery, enough of the bullshit. Enough of the soldiers and guns and MI5. Enough of bugs in phones and in people he cared about. Enough of not being cared about back. Enough of uncertainty and lies and civilization, collapsing or not. Enough of is part in it, his place, his role; the character of Simon Parity and all the baggage it entailed.

— A. Ashley Straker

Something was wrong with the devices themselves. Digging deep into the internal structure of the circuit boards with powerful microscopes, Simon's team had discovered broken and incorrect connections, electronic dead-ends, short circuits, and nonsensical pathways.

— A. Ashley Straker

The attack came without warning, in the pre-dawn stillness on the day they were due to leave. A series of solid concussions shook the walls and sent Simon scrambling from his bunk. Max thrust a handgun at him, which he immediately fumbled and dropped.

— A. Ashley Straker

The Gobi wasn't completely devoid of life; its ecosystem was unexpectedly extensive and varied given the extremes to which it subjected its denizens, but some of those forms of life weren't the kind that Anna wanted to admire too closely.

— A. Ashley Straker

The military operation swiftly became one of disaster management and damage control, search and rescue.

— A. Ashley Straker

The unfortunate 8075 hadn't survived his assault, splintering apart, fragments of its casing skittering across the bench. The battery within had split along its plane, revealing something as out-of-place as a missile in a bathtub.

— A. Ashley Straker