She came up on the second night, which taught Soren the last thing he needed to know about her.
She didn't keep appointments. She didn't need to.
Selah's wall came apart at 3:12 in the morning, and it didn't shatter. Forty feet of engineered ice simply stopped being ice, all of it at once, from the inside out, and went to gray dust that stood where it was and refused to fall.
Then the east yard turned over.
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They were ready and it didn't matter.
Soren was in the monitoring cabin with Dani. Maren and Selah had the yard's north side. Yara was standing on the pale patch itself, which she had insisted on, and which he had allowed against his better judgment because there had been no version of that argument he could win.
"Contact," said Dani, and then every terminal in the cabin went dark at the same instant.
Not off.
Dark. Screens at full brightness showing nothing.
"Out," said Soren. "Now."
They made it four steps from the cabin before the yard came in.
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