The first sign was that the training yard went quiet.
Soren felt it through Pack Sense before anyone said a word, a flat dead spot beneath the east half of the yard where the bond-noise of the whole campus usually hummed, and the dead spot was new and it was growing.
He'd come out for the morning drill.
Six in the morning, frost still on the practice dummies, the yard empty except for the early ranks.
He never got to the drill.
Joan found him standing in the middle of the field with his hand flat on the dirt.
"You're not training?"
"There's something under the yard."
She crouched next to him.
She'd burned her Bureau career to stay on Soren's side of this and she still moved like someone reading off a manual.
"Under it how deep?"
"I don't know, It's pulling." He pressed his palm harder against the ground. "It's been pulling for a while. We just train on top of it every morning and never noticed."
"And now?"
"Now it noticed us."
He didn't say the rest.
