“It was a distraction,” Ruban breathed as Ashwin came up behind him, skidding to a stop a few yards away from the west wing. He looked up at the devastation wrought on the topmost floor of the structure. It was immediately obvious to both of them, however, that the attack had been random and unplanned, with no specific target.

A section of the uppermost balcony had been shattered and bits of concrete littered the landing below, while others hung precariously off the jagged edges of what remained of the veranda. But the attack had been too shallow, the devastation it had wrought limited largely to the outer edges of the building. If it had been meant to target the people working within the walls of the structure, it had been singularly inadequate an attempt.

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That had never been the point of the blast, though, and Ruban knew it even as he whipped around and started running in the opposite direction almost instinctively. It wasn’t here that the actual target lay.