The triple pulse was still echoing through the compound when Mira reached the corridor.
Damien was already there.
He looked at her — one complete, quick assessment — and then they were moving together, the same way they had moved every morning in the training yard, the same synchrony of two people who had spent thirty days operating in adjacent space and had internalized each other's rhythms.
"Northwest creek bed and south approach," he said. "Sable confirmed — she heard them enter the outer perimeter boundary twenty minutes ago."
Twenty minutes. Which meant Valdris had started moving while it was still full dark, using the pre-dawn as cover. Smart. Expected.
"How many?" Mira said.
"North of sixty. South estimate is twenty-five." He glanced at her. "He kept the larger force for the c
