The seam ran the length of the room as the thing under it pushed.
Soren stood at the edge of it with his pack at his back and read the breach the way he read everything, in parts.
The frequency wasn't an attack but a channel.
Lior had matched a pair already cut, and the channel ran from the deep dark into Class Z.
The thing at the bottom had been told the door was open.
It wasn't climbing because it wanted them.
It was climbing because something had reached past its ceiling and pulled, and a thing that old didn't argue with a pull.
"Mona."
She was already at his feet, pressing.
"Down," he said. "Not up. Down."
◆◆◆◆
The mole didn't understand words but understood him anyway.
She'd circled this thing in the dark for weeks and kept her distance on purpose, every loop a measured gap between herself and a size she respected, and Soren had read that as nerves.
It wasn't nerves.
It was a smaller old thing minding a bigger old thing's depth.
