The pack got there in nine minutes.
Dani came with a terminal and no shoes. Maren came with her fire already up. Joan came dressed, because Joan slept in a way that assumed the worst. Mona rode in Maren's jacket with her nose out.
They found Yara standing in a hole.
She'd opened Selah's seal. Not broken it. Opened it, folded the ice aside into two clean walls, and gone down into the shaft with the empty chain still in her hand.
"That's my plug," Selah said.
"I'll put it back."
"That took eleven minutes and most of my blood sugar."
"Selah." Yara looked up out of the hole. "Please put a wall around this yard. Now. As thick as you can make it and I don't care what it costs you."
Selah stopped talking and started building.
◆◆◆◆
Soren went down the shaft.
The bottom was a chamber older than the academy, dry, cold, with anchor points cut into the rock at four corners and chains running from each of them into the middle.
All four chains were closed.
