The summons came on the academy letterhead and it didn't ask.
A site three regions out, past the rail line, past the last place the detection grid had clean coverage.
The Council wanted a Primordial Tamer to walk a containment perimeter they couldn't read, and they wanted him alone.
The academy signed off because the academy did what the Council told it to.
Soren read the order twice.
Alone meant the pack stayed.
He folded the letter and put it in his jacket and looked at the map nobody else could see, the six lines steady in the order he'd set, and he didn't like the shape of leaving them on the other side of a region from him.
He liked it less when he found out what the site was.
◆◆◆◆
The briefing officer was Bureau, the kind who'd outlived three reorganizations by never writing his real opinion down.
"It's a severance field," he said. "We don't know what made it. We know what it does."
"Which is?"
