waaaah. waaaah. waaaah.
Everyone turned.
Maeve was on her feet, her face so pale that her freckles stood out like dark stars on blank skin. Her fingers were frozen on the tablet screen, which was flashing solid red and showing a waveform so large it spilled off the edges.
"Holden." Her voice was small, too small for Maeve. She never sounded like that. "Come here. Now."
He was already moving, crossing the room in three strides and looking at the screen.
The radar showed the Abyssal Portal, that massive, swirling black hole on the horizon that had been pulsing steadily since it opened.
But the pulse had changed. It wasn't expanding and contracting anymore. It was growing, steadily and uniformly, like a balloon being inflated from the inside. The energy readings on the edge of the portal were climbing, and the numbers on Maeve's screen were spinning upward so fast they blurred.
"What am I looking at?"
